Graduates earn a median $41,863 two years after finishing, more than 20% of master's majors. Measured across 77 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 | University of Iowa cost & debt at this university → | $58,612 | $64,493 | not published | 24 |
| 2 | CUNY Graduate School and University Center | $41,716 | $52,107 | $56,736 | — |
| 3 | University of Missouri-Columbia | $47,912 | $50,543 | $55,003 | 59 |
| 4 | Kent State University at Kent | $59,374 | $50,320 | $53,983 | 18 |
| 5 | Columbia University in the City of New York | $44,977 | $49,931 | $55,958 | 240 |
| 6 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus | not published | $49,683 | not published | 78 |
| 7 | University of California-Berkeley cost & debt at this university → | $39,356 | $49,136 | $63,018 | — |
| 8 | Ball State University cost & debt at this university → | $54,012 | $48,041 | $52,927 | 8 |
| 9 | University of South Carolina-Columbia | not published | $47,260 | not published | 36 |
| 10 | St Bonaventure University cost & debt at this university → | $52,027 | $47,260 | $51,159 | 26 |
| 11 | University of South Florida cost & debt at this university → | $43,111 | $46,478 | not published | 11 |
| 12 | University of Georgia | $39,738 | $45,021 | $56,517 | 91 |
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 $54,713, so Journalism sits below the middle by $12,850.
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.
Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.
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.