What Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management Graduates Earn

Median earnings at 1, 4, and 5 years (College Scorecard)

Nothing on this page is a survey response or a recruiter's claim: the $38,224 year-one median and the $52,813 year-five median for Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management come from federal earnings records pooled across 251 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (3,062 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

Earnings in this field climb $14,589 between the first and fifth year, a 38% rise that trails the all-fields pattern (the median field in this dataset pays $45,010 at year one and $65,763 at year five). Early-career growth this shape usually means the first job is a foothold: licensure, a portfolio, or a first promotion does the heavy lifting.

The Pell split adds a second lens on the $38,224 year-one median: graduates who received Pell Grants earn a median of $37,548, and graduates who did not earn $37,453, a gap of $95. Read it as a map of where each group studied and the networks they carried in, not as the degree paying two different wages for the same work.

Inside its own CIP family, Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management ranks 2 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $45,592. Its closest sibling is Film/Video and Photographic Arts at $48,612, below this field's $52,813. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management stands number 152 by five-year earnings and number 149 by first-year earnings, and number 114 from the lowest median debt. Those three ranks together are the field's fingerprint: high earn rank with a low debt rank is the combination students are actually shopping for, and this field's spread between them is 38 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $21,500 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management, pooled from 36 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $38,224 that balance is 56% of a year's gross pay, roughly 6.7 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $244 a month and $7,822 in total interest. Your own balance and rate belong in the student loan payoff calculator; the degree-level verdict belongs in the college ROI calculator and the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

Where a student studies inside this field matters at least as much as the field itself. These five programs post the strongest five-year medians in Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by The New School at $91,691, against a national field median of $52,813.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of The New School's counted graduates earn less than $91,691. Weigh any program here against its own price using the net price estimator and the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 10.7% of the 2,857 graduates counted at five years, so the top of the table is a thin slice and not the field's center; and the leading program's five-year median of $91,691 sits 74% above the national field median of $52,813. Its median debt, $19,500, runs below the field median of $21,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.