What International/Globalization Studies Graduates Earn

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

The three rows below are the whole earnings story Scorecard can tell about International/Globalization Studies: $44,663, then $60,976, then $64,111. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 77 programs at year one and 85 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

From $44,663 in the first year to $64,111 in the fifth, earnings grow 44% ($19,448). For scale, the median bachelor's field in the Scorecard file grows from $45,010 to $65,763 over the same span, so this field's early-career slope is gentler than typical.

By Pell status, the year-one medians for International/Globalization Studies are $47,916 (received Pell) and $45,824 (did not), $2,092 apart. The split is a reminder that a field median averages over very different starting points; the institution a student picks inside the field moves their personal figure more than the field label does.

Inside its own CIP family, International/Globalization Studies ranks 3 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $62,349. Its closest sibling is Nutrition Sciences at $63,372, below this field's $64,111. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, International/Globalization Studies stands number 99 by five-year earnings and number 95 by first-year earnings, and number 9 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 90 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $17,609 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in International/Globalization Studies, pooled from 53 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $44,663 that balance is 39% of a year's gross pay, roughly 4.7 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $200 a month and $6,406 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

Program medians scatter widely around the national $64,111 five-year figure. The table ranks the reporting programs by their five-year median, keeping only programs with at least 30 graduates in that count so a tiny cohort cannot top the list by luck. University of Virginia-Main Campus leads it at $91,184.

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 13.0% of the 4,702 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 $91,184 sits 42% above the national field median of $64,111. Its median debt, $13,225, runs below the field median of $17,609, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.