Graduates earn a median $28,816 two years after finishing, more than 14% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 144 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
On earnings alone this is among the lowest-paying majors at this level. That does not make it a bad subject, but it does make the debt you take on for it matter more.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brigham Young University | $40,362 | $54,713 | not published | 22 |
| 2 | Rochester Institute of Technology cost & debt at this university → | $51,726 | $54,252 | $64,066 | 33 |
| 3 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo cost & debt at this university → | $49,435 | $52,385 | $62,891 | 75 |
| 4 | Ringling College of Art and Design | $44,528 | $48,725 | $57,463 | 124 |
| 5 | University of Maryland Global Campus | $35,300 | $47,260 | not published | 64 |
| 6 | University of Wisconsin-Stout cost & debt at this university → | $42,536 | $42,123 | $48,372 | 17 |
| 7 | Baker College cost & debt at this university → | $39,944 | $41,565 | $44,927 | — |
| 8 | University of Minnesota-Duluth cost & debt at this university → | $37,048 | $40,896 | not published | 11 |
| 9 | Carroll University | $36,463 | $40,768 | $44,510 | 18 |
| 10 | Roger Williams University cost & debt at this university → | $37,588 | $39,369 | $54,118 | 1 |
| 11 | New Jersey Institute of Technology cost & debt at this university → | $31,565 | $39,369 | $48,736 | 18 |
| 12 | Illinois State University cost & debt at this university → | $47,259 | $39,369 | $44,861 | 14 |
Two medians are worth separating. $28,816 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $29,685 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is lower here, which means the larger programmes in this field pay less than the small 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 bachelor's major in this dataset reports $42,682, so Graphic Communications sits below the middle by $13,866.
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.