Graduates earn a median $41,565 two years after finishing, more than 12% of master's majors. Measured across 89 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The New School | $59,302 | $58,866 | $69,897 | 8 |
| 2 | Pratt Institute-Main cost & debt at this university → | $50,911 | $53,984 | $66,508 | 47 |
| 3 | Teachers College at Columbia University | $51,540 | $50,022 | $62,159 | 22 |
| 4 | Boston University cost & debt at this university → | $49,096 | $47,260 | $51,534 | 57 |
| 5 | American University cost & debt at this university → | $47,574 | $47,260 | $50,579 | 6 |
| 6 | Carnegie Mellon University cost & debt at this university → | $40,916 | $46,924 | $55,974 | 71 |
| 7 | Claremont Graduate University | $40,112 | $46,254 | $48,539 | 18 |
| 8 | George Mason University cost & debt at this university → | $46,161 | $42,682 | $46,179 | 28 |
| 9 | Drexel University cost & debt at this university → | $40,541 | $41,565 | $44,288 | 33 |
| 10 | Seattle University cost & debt at this university → | $40,771 | $38,829 | $45,239 | 16 |
| 11 | Indiana University-Bloomington cost & debt at this university → | $42,284 | $38,829 | $43,214 | 20 |
| 12 | Savannah College of Art and Design | $28,603 | $38,721 | $44,614 | — |
Two medians are worth separating. $41,565 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $38,829 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is higher here, which means the larger programmes in this field are the better-paying ones.
It is the median of what real graduates of this exact major earned, taken from tax records two years after they completed. It is not a starting salary, not an average of job adverts, and not a projection. The median master's major in this dataset reports $52,837, so Arts, Entertainment sits below the middle by $11,272.
Two years is early in a career. Fields with long training pipelines — medicine, law, research — look weaker at this point than they will at ten, while trades and applied technical fields peak sooner. Read a low figure in a long-pipeline subject as "slow start", not "bad degree".
There is no debt figure here on purpose. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not borrowing, so nobody can honestly tell you the debt of a specific major. Debt is published per institution — that is where our university cost pages carry it.
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Classified by the Department of Education as Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management (CIP 5010). Source: US Department of Education College Scorecard, field-of-study earnings (median earnings of graduates who received federal financial aid, measured 1–3 years after completion). Figures are per major and credential level, pooled across US programmes. Information only, not financial advice.