What Radio, Television, and Digital Communication 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 Radio, Television, and Digital Communication: $38,757, then $49,951, then $55,440. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 146 programs at year one and 146 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

The trajectory is the story here: $38,757 at year one, $49,951 at year four, $55,440 at year five. That is 43% growth across the window Scorecard measures, worth $16,683 a year by the fifth year. Fields with flat early curves repay debt slowly; this one's curve works in the borrower’s favor.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Radio, Television, and Digital Communication post a median of $38,851, non-recipients $39,789. That $938 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, Radio, Television, and Digital Communication ranks 5 of 5 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $63,023. Its closest sibling is Communication and Media Studies at $60,586, above this field's $55,440. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Radio, Television, and Digital Communication stands number 137 by five-year earnings and number 145 by first-year earnings, and number 113 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 24 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Radio, Television, and Digital Communication graduate owe? $21,500, the graduate-weighted median over 124 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 55%, or 6.7 months of gross pay at the $38,757 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $244 a month with $7,822 of interest on top. Model a different balance in the student loan payoff calculator before you borrow it, and sanity-check the degree in the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Radio, Television, and Digital Communication is $55,440 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus heads the list at $108,130.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus at $108,130 is evidence about a place and a mix of students, not a wage offer. Put the same programs' prices next to these figures with the degree cost calculator and the net price estimator before ranking anything.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 4.0% of the 12,833 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 $108,130 sits 95% above the national field median of $55,440. Its median debt, $20,437, runs below the field median of $21,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.