Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Philosophy (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Philosophy earn a median of $54,455 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $34,926 and $78,043. We rank the 44 U.S. colleges whose Philosophy programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,729 graduates in all. That puts Philosophy at #91 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
University of Pennsylvania, in Pennsylvania, leads at $107,454, 93% above the median ranked school ($55,814). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $48,650 and $63,582, and the lowest earns $31,906. 24 of the 44 ranked schools (55%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 13 public, 6 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. California places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $16,732 a year, against $15,860 across all 44 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,250 in federal loans, about 30% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 2.5 years.
Showing the top 44 of 44 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $107,454 | 79 | $19,000 | $28,699 | 1.6 |
| 2 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $97,519 | 40 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 3.0 |
| 3 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $74,507 | 42 | $20,500 | $44,338 | 4.6 |
| 4 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $71,796 | 73 | $15,000 | $16,109 | 1.9 |
| 5 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $71,790 | 48 | $19,500 | $19,857 | 2.1 |
| 6 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $70,709 | 32 † | $14,618 | $11,655 | 1.3 |
| 7 | Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,628 | 29 † | $19,250 | $31,446 | 3.7 |
| 8 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,026 | 25 † | $25,375 | $24,402 | 3.6 |
| 9 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $67,293 | 35 † | $19,125 | $13,138 | 1.6 |
| 10 | California State University-Sacramento Sacramento, CA Public · 4-year | $65,115 | 27 † | $14,753 | $9,338 | 1.3 |
| 11 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $64,098 | 25 † | — | $9,597 | 1.3 |
| 12 | University of Scranton Scranton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,410 | 25 † | $27,000 | $32,568 | 4.8 |
| 13 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $63,326 | 67 | $13,345 | $13,481 | 2.0 |
| 14 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $61,754 | 104 | $15,000 | $12,548 | 2.0 |
| 15 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $61,595 | 65 | $13,500 | $14,091 | 2.7 |
| 16 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $61,186 | 32 † | $21,500 | $17,354 | 2.9 |
| 17 | Georgia State University Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $60,009 | 44 | $22,600 | $15,931 | 2.4 |
| 18 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $59,935 | 65 | $24,188 | $14,967 | 2.6 |
| 19 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $58,891 | 62 | $21,625 | $24,406 | 4.5 |
| 20 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $58,635 | 28 † | $24,500 | $22,182 | 4.1 |
| 21 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $58,633 | 38 † | $13,000 | $14,741 | 2.7 |
| 22 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $55,823 | 34 † | $20,800 | $17,339 | 3.5 |
| 23 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $55,804 | 35 † | $19,750 | $16,674 | 3.5 |
| 24 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $54,822 | 30 † | $17,375 | $21,315 | 4.3 |
| 25 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $53,189 | 32 † | $20,500 | $16,778 | 4.4 |
| 26 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $52,656 | 44 | $17,413 | $6,541 | 1.4 |
| 27 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,831 | 48 | $7,500 | $32,740 | 8.8 |
| 28 | University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year | $51,402 | 47 | $19,022 | $14,304 | 4.0 |
| 29 | University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year | $51,398 | 46 | $15,000 | $17,890 | 5.0 |
| 30 | Portland State University Portland, OR Public · 4-year | $50,191 | 29 † | $18,822 | $9,552 | 2.9 |
| 31 | University of Colorado Colorado Springs Colorado Springs, CO Public · 4-year | $49,909 | 31 † | $25,000 | $15,788 | 6.8 |
| 32 | The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,378 | 25 † | $26,759 | $29,561 | 12.8 |
| 33 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $49,062 | 27 † | $12,919 | $10,440 | 3.5 |
| 34 | Temple University Philadelphia, PA Public · 4-year | $47,414 | 26 † | $25,000 | $28,198 | 10.3 |
| 35 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $47,153 | 42 | $22,000 | $11,297 | 3.5 |
| 36 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC Public · 4-year | $46,067 | 29 † | $23,750 | $15,435 | 5.1 |
| 37 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $44,533 | 26 † | — | $6,555 | 3.5 |
| 38 | CUNY Lehman College Bronx, NY Public · 4-year | $43,165 | 28 † | $17,600 | $3,148 | 1.7 |
| 39 | Florida International University Miami, FL Public · 4-year | $43,085 | 27 † | $13,393 | $9,288 | 4.3 |
| 40 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $42,993 | 35 † | $15,750 | $12,278 | 8.2 |
| 41 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $42,337 | 25 † | $13,824 | $7,000 | 5.2 |
| 42 | University of St Thomas (MN) Saint Paul, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $41,209 | 26 † | $17,500 | $29,155 | 34.6 |
| 43 | University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Stevens Point, WI Public · 4-year | $39,532 | 26 † | $22,993 | $14,559 | — |
| 44 | Franciscan University of Steubenville Steubenville, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $31,906 | 26 † | $20,000 | $23,589 | — |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only bachelor's degree programs in Philosophy (CIP 3801, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 44.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 4 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Philosophy earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | $63,410 | 3 | University of Pennsylvania |
| California | $51,617 | 12 | University of California-Santa Barbara |
| Florida | $47,153 | 3 | University of Florida |
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