Educational/Instructional Media Design Associate degree
4 programs — 1 with federal cost data, the rest suppressed for small class sizes and listed after them, ordered by median debt against median earnings — lowest first.
Data last updated
Field
Delivery
Hide for-profit collegesWhat our data shows about for-profit collegesAcross the creative fields on this site, students at private for-profit institutions borrow 27% more than students at public ones ($29,332 against $23,033) and earn 15% less four years after completing ($38,361 against $45,110).The combined effect is severe. Median debt at a for-profit equals 70% of a graduate’s annual earnings, against 47% at a public institution. And 10% of for-profit programs leave graduates owing more than they earn in a year — against 1% of public ones. Ten times the rate.This is a pattern across 212 for-profit programs, not a handful of outliers, and it holds in every creative field we cover. It does not mean no for-profit program is worth taking: some appear high in our best-value rankings, and this filter hides those too. It means the odds are materially worse, and the burden of proof sits with the school.Figures are medians computed from the College Scorecard and IPEDS data behind every table on this site.
| Institution | Programcredential and delivery | at completion | 4 yrs after | Median federal loan debt at completion, divided by median earnings four years later. It answers a single question: how much of one year’s income do you owe on the day you finish?Below 50% is generally considered manageable. Above 100% means graduates owe more than they earn in a year, and repayment on a standard ten-year plan starts to consume a serious share of income.Debt covers federal loans only, so real ratios are often worse. Both figures are medians — half of graduates fall on the wrong side of each. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lone Star College SystemTX · PublicRequest information → | Educational/Instructional TechnologyAssociate degree · On campus | — | $34,994 | — |
| Essex County CollegeNJ · PublicRequest information → | Educational/Instructional TechnologyAssociate degree · On campus | Not reported | Not reported | — |
| Utah State UniversityUT · PublicRequest information → | Educational/Instructional TechnologyAssociate degree · Not reported | Not reported | Not reported | — |
| Warren County Community CollegeNJ · PublicRequest information → | Educational/Instructional TechnologyAssociate degree · On campus | Not reported | Not reported | — |
Source: College Scorecard, Field of Study (retrieved September 2026)
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One thing these figures cannot tell you
Earnings and debt are reported by the federal government at a four-digit program level, so a figure shown against “Educational/Instructional Media Design” covers every related program at that institution rather than one named degree. Full methodology.