What Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics 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 Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics: $40,497, then $56,041, then $60,587. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 181 programs at year one and 241 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

From $40,497 in the first year to $60,587 in the fifth, earnings grow 50% ($20,090). 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 steeper than typical.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics post a median of $41,474, non-recipients $41,481. That $7 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, Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics ranks 1 of 4 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $56,160. Its closest sibling is East Asian Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at $57,030, below this field's $60,587. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics stands number 111 by five-year earnings and number 134 by first-year earnings, and number 48 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 63 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $19,500 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 114 programs reporting debt. That is 48% of the first-year median earnings, or about 5.8 months of gross pay at $40,497 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $222 a month and interest adds $7,094 over the life of the loan. Price your own borrowing with the student loan payoff calculator, and test the whole degree in the college ROI calculator or 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 Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by Brigham Young University at $90,108, against a national field median of $60,587.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Brigham Young University at $90,108 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 2.5% of the 8,922 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 $90,108 sits 49% above the national field median of $60,587. Its median debt, $13,261, runs below the field median of $19,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.