What English Language and Literature/Letters, Other Graduates Earn

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

For English Language and Literature/Letters, Other, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $32,549 one year after graduation, $47,677 at four years, $48,323 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 439 people in the five-year pool, which is why they can sit above or below the unweighted middle program shown in the next column.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $48,323, which is $15,774 more than the year-one median of $32,549 (48% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts below the pack and ends below it.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in English Language and Literature/Letters, Other post a median of $32,982, non-recipients $32,979. That $3 gap is the distance between two different student populations studying under one field name, and it narrows or widens by institution, which the program table below hints at.

Inside its own CIP family, English Language and Literature/Letters, Other ranks 3 of 3 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $51,613. Its closest sibling is English Language and Literature, General at $51,613, above this field's $48,323. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, English Language and Literature/Letters, Other stands number 169 by five-year earnings and number 175 by first-year earnings, and number 116 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 53 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 12 programs that report debt for English Language and Literature/Letters, Other, the median graduate owes $21,500. Set beside the $32,549 year-one median, the debt is 66% of first-year gross earnings, about 7.9 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $244 monthly and $7,822 in interest. The student loan payoff calculator replays that schedule with your numbers, and the college ROI calculator weighs the full cost against the earnings table above.

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 English Language and Literature/Letters, Other among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by University of California-San Diego at $56,133, against a national field median of $48,323.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of University of California-San Diego's counted graduates earn less than $56,133. 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 62.6% of the 439 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 $56,133 sits 16% above the national field median of $48,323. Its median debt, $12,500, runs below the field median of $21,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.