Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Public Health (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Public Health earn a median of $58,808 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $41,981 and $79,154. We rank the 148 U.S. colleges whose Public Health programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 13,470 graduates in all. That puts Public Health at #69 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
University of Southern California, in California, leads at $89,522, 54% above the median ranked school ($58,215). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $52,501 and $64,320, and the lowest earns $38,325. 68 of the 148 ranked schools (46%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 10 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. California places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of District of Columbia (2).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $21,902 a year, against $16,443 across all 148 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,788 in federal loans, about 27% 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 2.3 years.
Showing the top 50 of 148 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $89,522 | 36 † | $15,000 | $32,740 | 2.5 |
| 2 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,217 | 38 † | $23,250 | $36,586 | 3.1 |
| 3 | Montana Technological University Butte, MT Public · 4-year | $86,855 | 36 † | $26,500 | $16,481 | 1.2 |
| 4 | Oakland University Rochester Hills, MI Public · 4-year | $85,266 | 33 † | $31,000 | $9,120 | 0.7 |
| 5 | Illinois State University Normal, IL Public · 4-year | $84,790 | 58 | $20,009 | $19,398 | 1.6 |
| 6 | Elon University Elon, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $81,153 | 47 | $20,500 | $41,555 | 3.5 |
| 7 | Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,113 | 81 | $12,750 | $18,809 | 1.8 |
| 8 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $78,928 | 33 † | $16,787 | $13,138 | 1.2 |
| 9 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $78,085 | 92 | $20,788 | $13,936 | 1.3 |
| 10 | California Baptist University Riverside, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,329 | 46 | $33,375 | $26,285 | 2.6 |
| 11 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $76,572 | 104 | $11,708 | $13,481 | 1.4 |
| 12 | Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania Bloomsburg, PA Public · 4-year | $75,679 | 129 | — | $15,699 | 1.6 |
| 13 | Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,448 | 38 † | $18,250 | $39,998 | 4.7 |
| 14 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $74,633 | 350 | $24,000 | $24,406 | 2.6 |
| 15 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $74,496 | 32 † | $11,760 | $25,184 | 3.0 |
| 16 | Chapman University Orange, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,529 | 50 | $23,125 | $46,555 | 5.2 |
| 17 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $72,328 | 222 | $21,500 | $15,678 | 1.8 |
| 18 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,840 | 45 | $19,000 | $37,050 | 4.2 |
| 19 | American University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,831 | 69 | $23,250 | $41,943 | 5.5 |
| 20 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $70,793 | 135 | $24,336 | $17,799 | 2.1 |
| 21 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $70,369 | 79 | $16,260 | $17,339 | 2.0 |
| 22 | National University San Diego, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,340 | 93 | $34,156 | $22,878 | 2.7 |
| 23 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,776 | 80 | $27,000 | $38,793 | 4.6 |
| 24 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $68,605 | 219 | $15,454 | $6,541 | 0.8 |
| 25 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $68,038 | 185 | $19,500 | $16,264 | 2.1 |
| 26 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $67,891 | 85 | $23,000 | $18,209 | 2.1 |
| 27 | University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OK Public · 4-year | $67,452 | 140 | $18,000 | $18,309 | 2.2 |
| 28 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $66,937 | 214 | $21,000 | $16,674 | 2.2 |
| 29 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $66,892 | 56 | $21,000 | $14,600 | 1.9 |
| 30 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $66,732 | 67 | $16,500 | $21,315 | 2.7 |
| 31 | The College of New Jersey Ewing, NJ Public · 4-year | $66,722 | 31 † | $21,500 | $27,646 | 3.7 |
| 32 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $66,110 | 193 | $15,000 | $12,470 | 1.7 |
| 33 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $65,978 | 187 | $19,728 | $14,355 | 1.9 |
| 34 | University of Massachusetts-Lowell Lowell, MA Public · 4-year | $65,429 | 103 | $24,982 | $17,163 | 2.8 |
| 35 | George Mason University Fairfax, VA Public · 4-year | $65,358 | 197 | $20,500 | $17,915 | 2.5 |
| 36 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $64,888 | 44 | $22,045 | $15,634 | 2.0 |
| 37 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $64,456 | 42 | $20,750 | $17,167 | 2.4 |
| 38 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $64,275 | 78 | $21,500 | $14,967 | 2.2 |
| 39 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC Public · 4-year | $63,965 | 51 | $27,000 | $15,435 | 2.1 |
| 40 | Regis College Weston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,892 | 27 † | $27,000 | $27,477 | 4.8 |
| 41 | CUNY Hunter College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $63,884 | 25 † | — | $2,984 | 0.4 |
| 42 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $63,854 | 170 | $21,746 | $22,383 | 3.9 |
| 43 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $63,666 | 203 | $15,500 | $14,091 | 2.4 |
| 44 | Saint Louis University Saint Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,652 | 39 † | $26,000 | $24,398 | 3.4 |
| 45 | Walden University Minneapolis, MN For-profit · 4-year | $63,061 | 55 | $35,750 | $33,817 | 5.4 |
| 46 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $62,633 | 191 | $21,500 | $19,604 | 3.1 |
| 47 | Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA Public · 4-year | $62,435 | 35 † | $20,326 | $18,476 | 3.4 |
| 48 | Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA Public · 4-year | $62,386 | 64 | $25,649 | $20,686 | 2.9 |
| 49 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $62,153 | 36 † | $23,875 | $21,637 | 3.3 |
| 50 | Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ Public · 4-year | $61,757 | 272 | $20,151 | $14,158 | 2.2 |
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 Public Health (CIP 5122, 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 148.
- 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 Public Health 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan | $67,115 | 4 | Oakland University |
| Massachusetts | $64,661 | 4 | Tufts University |
| Arizona | $64,275 | 3 | University of Arizona |
| New Jersey | $63,297 | 4 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| California | $60,904 | 13 | University of Southern California |
| North Carolina | $60,144 | 8 | Elon University |
| Minnesota | $59,639 | 5 | Walden University |
| Illinois | $58,603 | 5 | Illinois State University |
| Virginia | $57,945 | 3 | George Mason University |
| Indiana | $57,800 | 5 | Indiana University-Bloomington |
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