undergradly.

Outcomes

Earnings trajectory

Earnings across the first decade (P25 / median / P75)

Census PSEO, bachelor's degree recipients, graduating cohort 0000 (56,443 graduates). Each point is one published percentile, not an average across fields.

Median earnings · 10yr
$46,600
Cost-adjusted: $50,232
Median debt (completers)
$23,250
Debt/earnings ratio: 0.50
3-yr default rate
0.0%
Borrowers who entered repayment in the published cohort year, not current students

College Scorecard. Earnings are measured ten years after entry across students who received federal aid — completers and non-completers alike — not ten years after graduation.

Ten-year median earnings of $46,600 are unremarkable — neither the reason to come nor the reason to stay away. The middle half of the students measured earn between $28,267 and $68,841 ten years after entry — a normal spread, so the median is a fair expectation. Adjusted for local cost of living, that median is effectively $50,232 — the surrounding area is cheap enough that the salary stretches further than the raw figure suggests. Median debt among completers is $23,250, roughly the national norm. A debt-to-income ratio of 0.50 sits right at the threshold where borrowing starts to constrain choices.

Economic mobility (Opportunity Insights)

Mobility rate
1.2%
Bottom → top quintile
Access Q1
8.4%
% from bottom quintile
Success rate Q1
14.3%
Q1 students reaching Q5

Opportunity Insights, students born 1980–1991 — a track record, not a forecast for today's entering class. The mobility rate is a share of all students (bottom-quintile origin and top-quintile outcome); the success rate is the share of bottom-quintile students alone who reach the top. They answer different questions and the second is always the larger number.

Earnings percentiles by field (Census PSEO)

One row per field and graduating cohort. Rows that share a field are different graduating classes, not repeats.

Field Graduating cohort Years after grad P25 Median P75
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2019 1 $28,218 $37,592 $48,914
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2016 1 $26,695 $34,911 $46,041
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2013 1 $25,504 $35,032 $44,978
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2010 1 $25,723 $33,757 $43,433
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2007 1 $25,756 $34,188 $45,233
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2004 1 $26,683 $35,210 $46,270
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2001 1 $26,611 $35,757 $44,455
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 0000 1 $26,160 $34,798 $45,166
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2016 5 $40,834 $52,944 $65,877
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2013 5 $41,032 $53,564 $67,945
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2010 5 $38,460 $52,912 $67,311
Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (09) 2007 5 $36,534 $49,000 $62,181

Census PSEO, bachelor's degree recipients — earnings measured 1, 5 and 10 years after graduation, unlike the Scorecard figures above. The all-fields institution total is published separately and is not one of the rows above. A cohort label covers a pooling window of three or five graduating years, which PSEO does not publish per cell.

Independent ROI ranking

Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce ranked this school #1,670 of 4,419 US colleges by 40-year return on investment — the net present value of attending after costs.

10-year NPV
$85,000
20-year NPV
$414,000
40-year NPV
$906,000

Georgetown University CEW, Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022)