What Fine and Studio Arts Graduates Earn

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

For Fine and Studio Arts, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $30,936 one year after graduation, $42,362 at four years, $45,885 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 23,800 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 $45,885, which is $14,949 more than the year-one median of $30,936 (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.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $30,009 for graduates who received Pell, $32,311 for those who did not. The $2,302 difference tracks institutional mix and starting networks far more than it tracks the credential itself, and it is printed here because a Pell student comparing programs deserves the unblended number.

Inside its own CIP family, Fine and Studio Arts ranks 4 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $45,592. Its closest sibling is Visual and Performing Arts, General at $45,592, below this field's $45,885. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Fine and Studio Arts stands number 176 by five-year earnings and number 178 by first-year earnings, and number 101 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 75 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 347 programs that report debt for Fine and Studio Arts, the median graduate owes $21,000. Set beside the $30,936 year-one median, the debt is 68% of first-year gross earnings, about 8.1 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $239 monthly and $7,640 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 Fine and Studio Arts among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by Binghamton University at $72,959, against a national field median of $45,885.

Treat the top of this table as a research list, not a ranking to enroll by: medians reflect local labor markets and student mix as much as teaching. The honest comparison pairs each program's earnings here with its net price from the net price estimator and its four-year total from the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 1.6% of the 23,800 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 $72,959 sits 59% above the national field median of $45,885. Its median debt, $15,875, runs below the field median of $21,000, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.