Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Religious Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Religious Studies earn a median of $41,390 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $20,518 and $65,165. We rank the 20 U.S. colleges whose Religious Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,461 graduates in all. That puts Religious Studies at #128 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Yeshivas Be'er Yitzchok, in New Jersey, leads at $98,832, 132% above the median ranked school ($42,539). The gap between schools is wide: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $22,830 and $52,174, and the lowest earns $18,837, so for this major the school you graduate from matters a lot. 10 of the 20 ranked schools (50%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 16 private nonprofit, 4 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 20% are public. New York places 8 schools in the top 20, ahead of California (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $14,991 a year, against $14,991 across all 20 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $24,474 in federal loans, about 58% 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 4.9 years.
Showing the top 20 of 20 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Yeshivas Be'er Yitzchok Elizabeth, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,832 | 25 † | — | $28,599 | 1.8 |
| 2 | Cairn University-Langhorne Langhorne, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,492 | 49 | $30,437 | $27,642 | 5.8 |
| 3 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $53,789 | 25 † | $21,000 | $14,967 | 3.5 |
| 4 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $52,716 | 28 † | $12,550 | $11,655 | 2.5 |
| 5 | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI Public · 4-year | $52,659 | 25 † | — | $15,014 | 4.0 |
| 6 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC Public · 4-year | $52,012 | 33 † | $22,500 | $15,435 | 3.4 |
| 7 | Liberty University Lynchburg, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,991 | 741 | $31,332 | $29,357 | 10.3 |
| 8 | California Baptist University Riverside, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,121 | 25 † | $24,474 | $26,285 | 10.4 |
| 9 | Ohio Christian University Circleville, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,350 | 88 | $30,625 | $20,607 | 8.0 |
| 10 | Evangel University Springfield, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,205 | 25 † | $22,369 | $18,669 | 6.6 |
| 11 | Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad West Coast Talmudical Seminary Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $38,872 | 29 † | — | $14,959 | — |
| 12 | St Olaf College Northfield, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $37,335 | 26 † | $25,000 | $23,874 | — |
| 13 | Uta Mesivta of Kiryas Joel Monroe, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $29,579 | 299 | — | $4,156 | — |
| 14 | Central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitz Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $24,179 | 108 | — | $21,437 | — |
| 15 | Rabbinical College Bobover Yeshiva Bnei Zion Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $23,329 | 81 | — | $9,136 | — |
| 16 | Mesivta Torah Vodaath Rabbinical Seminary Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $21,332 | 35 † | — | $4,876 | — |
| 17 | Talmudical Seminary of Bobov Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $20,163 | 106 | — | $2,840 | — |
| 18 | Yeshivath Viznitz Monsey, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $19,897 | 159 | — | $8,929 | — |
| 19 | Be'er Yaakov Talmudic Seminary Spring Valley, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $19,093 | 90 | — | $4,543 | — |
| 20 | United Talmudical Seminary Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $18,837 | 464 | — | $6,640 | — |
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 Religious Studies (CIP 3802, 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 20.
- 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 Religious Studies 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | $20,748 | 8 | Uta Mesivta of Kiryas Joel |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Philosophy (Bachelor's)
$54,455 national median · 44 schools
-
Fine and Studio Arts (Bachelor's)
$41,367 national median · 287 schools
-
Visual and Performing Arts (General) (Bachelor's)
$41,688 national median · 41 schools
-
Dance (Bachelor's)
$39,980 national median · 23 schools
-
Music (Bachelor's)
$42,892 national median · 160 schools
-
Theatre Arts (Bachelor's)
$39,775 national median · 153 schools
-
Graphic Communications (Bachelor's)
$43,283 national median · 40 schools
-
Film and Photography (Bachelor's)
$43,765 national median · 109 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college