Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Romance Languages (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Romance Languages earn a median of $55,000 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $38,411 and $73,324. We rank the 109 U.S. colleges whose Romance Languages programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 5,102 graduates in all. That puts Romance Languages at #88 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Villanova University, in Pennsylvania, leads at $94,964, 71% above the median ranked school ($55,614). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $51,433 and $61,697, and the lowest earns $37,013, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 61 of the 109 ranked schools (56%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 15 public, 5 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 80% are public. The top 20 are spread across 16 states, with California the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $19,496 a year, against $16,778 across all 109 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $18,250 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 109 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,964 | 28 † | $27,000 | $43,756 | 3.0 |
| 2 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,619 | 42 | $19,000 | $26,780 | 2.2 |
| 3 | Tulane University of Louisiana New Orleans, LA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,925 | 30 † | $20,500 | $39,949 | 3.5 |
| 4 | College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,301 | 45 | $26,975 | $38,782 | 4.4 |
| 5 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $75,715 | 36 † | $11,593 | $13,481 | 1.4 |
| 6 | Emory University Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,399 | 26 † | $19,500 | $22,585 | 2.3 |
| 7 | Weber State University Ogden, UT Public · 4-year | $70,174 | 25 † | $12,500 | $10,258 | 1.3 |
| 8 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $68,496 | 68 | $16,601 | $16,109 | 2.0 |
| 9 | California State Polytechnic University-Pomona Pomona, CA Public · 4-year | $68,077 | 25 † | — | $11,531 | 1.5 |
| 10 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $67,904 | 52 | $14,491 | $21,565 | 2.8 |
| 11 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $67,384 | 85 | $23,830 | $21,440 | 3.2 |
| 12 | Binghamton University Vestal, NY Public · 4-year | $66,841 | 34 † | $17,263 | $21,620 | 2.8 |
| 13 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $66,519 | 59 | $20,750 | $24,406 | 3.3 |
| 14 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $66,414 | 28 † | $20,000 | $17,167 | 2.2 |
| 15 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $65,765 | 33 † | $13,000 | $6,541 | 0.8 |
| 16 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $65,380 | 59 | $17,500 | $21,193 | 3.4 |
| 17 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $64,570 | 84 | $13,379 | $11,655 | 1.5 |
| 18 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $64,426 | 103 | $16,672 | $13,138 | 1.8 |
| 19 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $64,350 | 48 | $25,410 | $17,799 | 2.6 |
| 20 | CUNY Queens College Queens, NY Public · 4-year | $64,185 | 25 † | — | $4,195 | 0.6 |
| 21 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $63,942 | 35 † | $20,019 | $13,936 | 1.9 |
| 22 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $63,733 | 32 † | $24,125 | $25,097 | 3.9 |
| 23 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,189 | 69 | $12,500 | $15,564 | 2.5 |
| 24 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $62,831 | 41 | $23,250 | $32,875 | 5.0 |
| 25 | Washington & Jefferson College Washington, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,972 | 25 † | $27,000 | $25,002 | 3.9 |
| 26 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $61,801 | 59 | $21,254 | $14,355 | 2.2 |
| 27 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $61,757 | 68 | $13,000 | $16,264 | 2.6 |
| 28 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $61,697 | 45 | $24,246 | $18,589 | 3.0 |
| 29 | University of the Pacific Stockton, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,487 | 27 † | $23,500 | $25,447 | 4.2 |
| 30 | Wofford College Spartanburg, SC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,200 | 48 | $25,269 | $18,732 | 2.8 |
| 31 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $60,797 | 137 | $14,235 | $14,741 | 2.5 |
| 32 | Temple University Philadelphia, PA Public · 4-year | $60,672 | 63 | $23,852 | $28,198 | 4.7 |
| 33 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $60,001 | 41 | $20,000 | $17,747 | 3.1 |
| 34 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $59,315 | 47 | $27,000 | $19,680 | 3.2 |
| 35 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $59,193 | 27 † | $19,742 | $15,678 | 2.9 |
| 36 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $58,750 | 34 † | $20,702 | $28,384 | 5.0 |
| 37 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $58,697 | 51 | $18,947 | $19,857 | 3.3 |
| 38 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $58,565 | 135 | $20,000 | $17,354 | 3.3 |
| 39 | Smith College Northampton, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $58,304 | 34 † | $19,000 | $27,579 | 6.4 |
| 40 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $58,235 | 78 | $21,500 | $17,339 | 3.1 |
| 41 | University of Minnesota-Duluth Duluth, MN Public · 4-year | $57,886 | 30 † | $23,394 | $18,743 | 3.7 |
| 42 | University of Illinois Chicago Chicago, IL Public · 4-year | $57,594 | 41 | $17,500 | $10,974 | 2.0 |
| 43 | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus Durham, NH Public · 4-year | $57,523 | 33 † | $27,000 | $23,805 | 6.1 |
| 44 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $57,106 | 91 | $19,216 | $22,182 | 4.4 |
| 45 | Seattle University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,093 | 27 † | $23,319 | $34,662 | 8.4 |
| 46 | Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ Public · 4-year | $57,004 | 27 † | $19,500 | $14,158 | 2.8 |
| 47 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $56,442 | 38 † | $18,375 | $14,276 | 2.6 |
| 48 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $56,144 | 31 † | $17,200 | $14,480 | 3.0 |
| 49 | University of Puget Sound Tacoma, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,052 | 53 | $27,000 | $38,394 | 9.9 |
| 50 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $56,041 | 28 † | $27,000 | $30,434 | 6.2 |
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 Romance Languages (CIP 1609, 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 109.
- 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 Romance Languages 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 | $65,300 | 4 | Binghamton University |
| Georgia | $63,942 | 3 | Emory University |
| Pennsylvania | $61,972 | 5 | Villanova University |
| Washington | $57,093 | 3 | Western Washington University |
| Indiana | $56,526 | 4 | University of Notre Dame |
| Arizona | $55,428 | 3 | Northern Arizona University |
| Illinois | $55,127 | 6 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| New Jersey | $55,075 | 5 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| Wisconsin | $54,844 | 6 | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Texas | $54,541 | 9 | The University of Texas at Austin |
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