Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) earn a median of $47,382 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $38,431 and $56,096. We rank the 501 U.S. colleges whose Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 42,932 graduates in all. That puts Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) at #119 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
College of Staten Island CUNY, in New York, leads at $75,637, 58% above the median ranked school ($47,767). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $44,850 and $51,665, and the lowest earns $34,335, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 272 of the 501 ranked schools (54%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 9 public, 11 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. New York places 7 schools in the top 20, ahead of Washington (4).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $20,046 a year, against $17,596 across all 501 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,819 in federal loans, about 33% 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 3.2 years.
Showing the top 50 of 501 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | College of Staten Island CUNY Staten Island, NY Public · 4-year | $75,637 | 44 | $20,340 | $5,579 | 0.6 |
| 2 | CUNY Hunter College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $73,857 | 50 | $13,920 | $2,984 | 0.3 |
| 3 | St. John's University-New York Queens, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,439 | 62 | $27,000 | $29,999 | 3.6 |
| 4 | University of the Pacific Stockton, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,342 | 34 † | $22,650 | $25,447 | 3.1 |
| 5 | Hofstra University Hempstead, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,847 | 30 † | $23,250 | $34,176 | 4.3 |
| 6 | CUNY Queens College Queens, NY Public · 4-year | $67,221 | 82 | $11,000 | $4,195 | 0.5 |
| 7 | Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,848 | 27 † | $19,500 | $19,589 | 3.0 |
| 8 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,640 | 34 † | $18,000 | $37,050 | 5.1 |
| 9 | University of Illinois Chicago Chicago, IL Public · 4-year | $64,100 | 45 | $15,000 | $10,974 | 1.6 |
| 10 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $62,500 | 47 | $20,043 | $21,193 | 3.9 |
| 11 | Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,399 | 51 | $27,000 | $31,446 | 4.9 |
| 12 | State University of New York at Cortland Cortland, NY Public · 4-year | $62,275 | 140 | $21,794 | $22,345 | 3.4 |
| 13 | Saint Peter's University Jersey City, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,040 | 34 † | $23,650 | $12,199 | 1.9 |
| 14 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,719 | 43 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 8.1 |
| 15 | Centenary University Hackettstown, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,358 | 27 † | $23,611 | $20,503 | 3.4 |
| 16 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $61,304 | 164 | $20,819 | $14,971 | 2.9 |
| 17 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $61,081 | 46 | $23,370 | $16,200 | 2.9 |
| 18 | Heritage University Toppenish, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,999 | 58 | $18,750 | $14,598 | 2.9 |
| 19 | University of Scranton Scranton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,846 | 45 | $27,000 | $32,568 | 5.4 |
| 20 | Bowie State University Bowie, MD Public · 4-year | $60,746 | 25 † | — | $19,298 | 3.3 |
| 21 | University of Alaska Anchorage Anchorage, AK Public · 4-year | $60,612 | 40 | $20,003 | $15,301 | 3.5 |
| 22 | Fresno Pacific University Fresno, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,338 | 241 | $23,000 | $13,630 | 2.3 |
| 23 | Rider University Lawrenceville, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,178 | 105 | $25,748 | $24,792 | 4.3 |
| 24 | Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,125 | 39 † | $22,287 | $36,660 | 5.8 |
| 25 | Whitworth University Spokane, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,010 | 93 | $26,799 | $26,534 | 5.5 |
| 26 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $59,993 | 165 | $12,500 | $12,278 | 2.1 |
| 27 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $59,736 | 91 | $15,249 | $14,091 | 2.9 |
| 28 | Saint Joseph's University - Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,717 | 72 | $27,000 | $29,689 | 5.1 |
| 29 | Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA Public · 4-year | $59,659 | 78 | $20,205 | $18,476 | 3.9 |
| 30 | Saint Martin's University Lacey, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,433 | 28 † | — | $28,119 | 6.0 |
| 31 | The College of New Jersey Ewing, NJ Public · 4-year | $59,328 | 116 | $23,299 | $27,646 | 4.9 |
| 32 | Salve Regina University Newport, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,178 | 47 | $27,000 | $36,967 | 7.9 |
| 33 | Kean University Union, NJ Public · 4-year | $58,885 | 126 | $25,713 | $12,447 | 2.3 |
| 34 | CUNY Brooklyn College Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $58,828 | 152 | $10,315 | $3,103 | 0.5 |
| 35 | SUNY Oneonta Oneonta, NY Public · 4-year | $58,496 | 130 | $20,250 | $19,158 | 3.4 |
| 36 | Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, FL Public · 4-year | $58,115 | 112 | $17,989 | $12,568 | 2.1 |
| 37 | Saint Xavier University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $58,097 | 31 † | $27,000 | $10,970 | 2.0 |
| 38 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $58,086 | 73 | $18,625 | $15,678 | 3.1 |
| 39 | Florida SouthWestern State College Fort Myers, FL Public · 4-year | $57,918 | 65 | $10,519 | $7,247 | 1.2 |
| 40 | State University of New York at Oswego Oswego, NY Public · 4-year | $57,622 | 61 | $20,196 | $16,236 | 3.0 |
| 41 | SUNY Old Westbury Old Westbury, NY Public · 4-year | $57,360 | 25 † | $17,862 | $11,282 | 2.1 |
| 42 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $56,999 | 92 | $21,875 | $21,440 | 5.2 |
| 43 | Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,955 | 40 | $23,250 | $31,487 | 6.5 |
| 44 | Stockton University Galloway, NJ Public · 4-year | $56,838 | 33 † | $25,000 | $20,670 | 4.2 |
| 45 | George Fox University Newberg, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,768 | 68 | $22,562 | $31,679 | 6.4 |
| 46 | Salem State University Salem, MA Public · 4-year | $56,509 | 45 | — | $15,996 | 4.1 |
| 47 | Baylor University Waco, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,476 | 52 | $22,250 | $41,104 | 7.6 |
| 48 | University of Massachusetts-Boston Boston, MA Public · 4-year | $56,460 | 86 | $24,990 | $17,707 | 4.6 |
| 49 | Martin Luther College New Ulm, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,435 | 144 | $20,695 | $18,463 | 4.0 |
| 50 | St. John Fisher University Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,411 | 36 † | $26,783 | $28,945 | 5.6 |
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 Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) (CIP 1312, 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 501.
- 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 Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) 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 Jersey | $60,178 | 7 | Seton Hall University |
| Washington | $60,010 | 9 | Pacific Lutheran University |
| New York | $56,204 | 24 | College of Staten Island CUNY |
| Maryland | $56,031 | 6 | Bowie State University |
| Nevada | $55,532 | 3 | University of Nevada-Las Vegas |
| Rhode Island | $54,557 | 4 | Salve Regina University |
| Massachusetts | $53,668 | 10 | Boston College |
| Oregon | $53,584 | 5 | George Fox University |
| Utah | $53,059 | 6 | University of Utah |
| Florida | $51,863 | 19 | Florida Gulf Coast University |
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