Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Visual and Performing Arts (General) (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Visual and Performing Arts (General) earn a median of $41,688 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $25,771 and $59,858. We rank the 41 U.S. colleges whose Visual and Performing Arts (General) programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,284 graduates in all. That puts Visual and Performing Arts (General) at #127 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Fordham University, in New York, leads at $65,848, 53% above the median ranked school ($43,063). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $38,676 and $47,546, and the lowest earns $27,875. 24 of the 41 ranked schools (59%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 15 public, 3 private nonprofit and 2 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 78% are public. California places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of New York (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $19,112 a year, against $18,173 across all 41 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $22,398 in federal loans, about 47% 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 5.8 years.
Showing the top 41 of 41 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,848 | 47 | $27,000 | $44,338 | 5.9 |
| 2 | Champlain College Burlington, VT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,883 | 66 | $27,000 | $35,860 | 7.0 |
| 3 | George Mason University Fairfax, VA Public · 4-year | $54,703 | 105 | $21,125 | $17,915 | 4.0 |
| 4 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $53,829 | 62 | $21,250 | $19,857 | 4.2 |
| 5 | University of Central Florida Orlando, FL Public · 4-year | $52,922 | 120 | $22,481 | $10,411 | 2.2 |
| 6 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $50,205 | 41 | $20,250 | $20,268 | 5.3 |
| 7 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $48,589 | 75 | $21,480 | $14,967 | 4.9 |
| 8 | University of Advancing Technology Tempe, AZ For-profit · 4-year | $48,112 | 29 † | $29,750 | $28,522 | 9.8 |
| 9 | California State University-San Marcos San Marcos, CA Public · 4-year | $48,043 | 42 | $18,625 | $10,229 | 3.7 |
| 10 | University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Whitewater, WI Public · 4-year | $47,819 | 52 | $22,398 | $14,158 | 5.5 |
| 11 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $47,546 | 55 | $18,657 | $6,541 | 2.0 |
| 12 | SUNY Oneonta Oneonta, NY Public · 4-year | $47,321 | 62 | $19,891 | $19,158 | 6.6 |
| 13 | Otis College of Art and Design Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,220 | 101 | $27,000 | $51,248 | 20.0 |
| 14 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $46,944 | 34 † | $26,869 | $24,022 | 8.8 |
| 15 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $45,915 | 62 | $15,000 | $12,470 | 5.6 |
| 16 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $45,170 | 26 † | $24,225 | $32,875 | 15.2 |
| 17 | University of New Mexico-Main Campus Albuquerque, NM Public · 4-year | $44,091 | 50 | $15,000 | $15,489 | 5.2 |
| 18 | Longwood University Farmville, VA Public · 4-year | $44,066 | 42 | $27,000 | $19,066 | 10.2 |
| 19 | Empire State University Saratoga Springs, NY Public · 4-year | $43,473 | 42 | — | $11,676 | 6.0 |
| 20 | Academy of Art University San Francisco, CA For-profit · 4-year | $43,084 | 35 † | $31,000 | $40,613 | 26.6 |
| 21 | Ramapo College of New Jersey Mahwah, NJ Public · 4-year | $43,063 | 25 † | $22,719 | $18,173 | 11.9 |
| 22 | Southern Oregon University Ashland, OR Public · 4-year | $43,044 | 52 | $20,833 | $16,732 | 11.0 |
| 23 | Christopher Newport University Newport News, VA Public · 4-year | $42,907 | 44 | $25,000 | $23,015 | 14.6 |
| 24 | Grand Canyon University Phoenix, AZ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,219 | 52 | $26,465 | $22,472 | 15.7 |
| 25 | Montclair State University Montclair, NJ Public · 4-year | $41,156 | 80 | — | $15,566 | 14.9 |
| 26 | University of Wisconsin-Stout Menomonie, WI Public · 4-year | $41,129 | 43 | $28,000 | $17,490 | 19.7 |
| 27 | University of North Carolina Asheville Asheville, NC Public · 4-year | $40,444 | 57 | $22,582 | $12,250 | 7.7 |
| 28 | Stockton University Galloway, NJ Public · 4-year | $40,199 | 40 | $23,750 | $20,670 | 25.7 |
| 29 | Bennington College Bennington, VT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,958 | 29 † | $27,000 | $30,947 | 45.7 |
| 30 | Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS Public · 4-year | $38,939 | 50 | $27,000 | $17,595 | 8.8 |
| 31 | University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth North Dartmouth, MA Public · 4-year | $38,676 | 29 † | $15,000 | $20,927 | — |
| 32 | University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS Public · 4-year | $38,599 | 33 † | — | $21,708 | 11.3 |
| 33 | The University of Tennessee-Martin Martin, TN Public · 4-year | $37,930 | 36 † | $19,401 | $10,701 | 13.7 |
| 34 | The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX Public · 4-year | $37,825 | 49 | $19,500 | $18,267 | 24.2 |
| 35 | University of Houston-Downtown Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $37,668 | 28 † | — | $10,542 | 14.7 |
| 36 | University of Colorado Colorado Springs Colorado Springs, CO Public · 4-year | $37,628 | 50 | $24,500 | $15,788 | — |
| 37 | Full Sail University Winter Park, FL For-profit · 4-year | $36,870 | 326 | $26,533 | $38,875 | 61.7 |
| 38 | Stetson University DeLand, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $35,045 | 28 † | $27,000 | $19,372 | — |
| 39 | Southeast Missouri State University Cape Girardeau, MO Public · 4-year | $33,293 | 29 † | $23,320 | $15,882 | — |
| 40 | Salem State University Salem, MA Public · 4-year | $32,484 | 31 † | $25,874 | $15,996 | — |
| 41 | New Mexico State University-Main Campus Las Cruces, NM Public · 4-year | $27,875 | 25 † | $28,500 | $8,889 | — |
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 Visual and Performing Arts (General) (CIP 5001, 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 41.
- 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 Visual and Performing Arts (General) 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona | $48,112 | 3 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion |
| New York | $47,321 | 3 | Fordham University |
| California | $46,568 | 4 | California State University-San Marcos |
| Virginia | $44,066 | 3 | George Mason University |
| Florida | $42,208 | 4 | University of Central Florida |
| New Jersey | $41,156 | 3 | Ramapo College of New Jersey |
| Texas | $37,825 | 3 | The University of Texas at Austin |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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Fine and Studio Arts (Bachelor's)
$41,367 national median · 287 schools
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Design and Applied Arts (Bachelor's)
$51,490 national median · 200 schools
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Music (Bachelor's)
$42,892 national median · 160 schools
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Theatre Arts (Bachelor's)
$39,775 national median · 153 schools
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Film and Photography (Bachelor's)
$43,765 national median · 109 schools
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Arts and Media Management (Bachelor's)
$48,240 national median · 29 schools
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Dance (Bachelor's)
$39,980 national median · 23 schools
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Religious Studies (Bachelor's)
$41,390 national median · 20 schools
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