Graduates earn a median $45,021 two years after finishing, more than 19% 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 |
Two medians are worth separating. $45,021 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $41,863 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 Journalism sits below the middle by $7,816.
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.
Tell us what you need and we will come back with the lenders that actually fund students from your country — including options with no US co-signer. No obligation, and we never charge you.
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.