Graduates earn a median $33,710 two years after finishing, more than 34% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 1,140 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
It pays around the middle. What you earn will depend more on where you study and what you do with it than on the subject label.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cornell University cost & debt at this university → | $44,071 | $55,813 | $65,089 | 64 |
| 2 | University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university → | $50,120 | $54,581 | $63,398 | 62 |
| 3 | The University of Texas Permian Basin cost & debt at this university → | $38,389 | $52,107 | $42,964 | 22 |
| 4 | Colorado State University Global cost & debt at this university → | $46,011 | $51,273 | $47,299 | 13 |
| 5 | Creighton University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $50,856 | not published | 11 |
| 6 | Northeastern University Professional Programs | $48,567 | $49,868 | $59,225 | 2 |
| 7 | Northeastern University | $48,567 | $49,868 | $59,225 | 132 |
| 8 | Bryant University cost & debt at this university → | $44,312 | $49,019 | $55,488 | 25 |
| 9 | Northwestern University | $48,590 | $48,041 | $61,122 | 82 |
| 10 | Boston University cost & debt at this university → | $41,873 | $47,620 | $57,236 | 60 |
| 11 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor cost & debt at this university → | $45,761 | $47,473 | $56,558 | 209 |
| 12 | University of California-Berkeley cost & debt at this university → | $48,287 | $47,473 | $61,158 | 265 |
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 bachelor's major in this dataset reports $37,568, so Communication and Media Studies sits below the middle by $3,858.
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.
We may earn a commission if you take a loan through a provider here. It never changes the earnings figures on this page — those come from the US Department of Education.
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.