Digital marketing has no federal earnings line. The field it reports under pays $66,349.

The median, and how many programs report it

The median is $66,349, four years after completing. That is the midpoint of the program medians for the 3,489 marketing and business programs that report graduate earnings to the College Scorecard. It is not an average of everyone working in marketing. It is what the federal file shows for people who finished a program in this field, took federal student aid, and were still filing four years later.

Coverage matters as much as the figure. Only 51% of the 6,898 programs on our table, across 2,516 institutions, publish an earnings number at all. The rest are suppressed because too few graduates in the cohort took federal aid to release a figure without identifying individuals. When a school quotes you a salary for its marketing graduates, the first thing to establish is whether its program is one of the ones with a published federal number, or whether the claim rests on an internal survey.

Digital marketing does not get its own federal earnings line. The Scorecard publishes earnings at the four-digit CIP level, and the closest codes are Marketing, with 1,425 programs, and Business Administration, Management and Operations, with 5,032. Public Relations, Advertising, and Applied Communication covers another 441. On our grouping of the same field, Digital Marketing & E-Commerce holds 201 programs and Marketing holds 1,385, inside a field of 6,898 programs producing 379,041 awards a year. A degree marketed as digital marketing is almost always reported under one of those broader codes. So the honest federal answer for a digital marketing degree is the marketing and business number, plus the program-level detail below.

For scale, the all-field national median four years after completing is $68,257. Marketing and business sits just under it.

By credential

The credential you enroll in moves the number more than the specialization on the diploma does.

Undergraduate certificates report a median of $50,363 four years after completing, with median debt of $13,326 at completion and median in-state tuition of $4,969. That is a debt-to-earnings ratio of 26%, the lowest on the ladder. Treat it as indicative rather than settled: only 132 of the 1,285 certificate programs report earnings, the thinnest base in the field.

Associate degrees report $48,863, from 571 of 1,484 programs, with median debt of $14,087 at completion and median in-state tuition of $4,848. The ratio is 29%. The certificate median sits above the associate median, which is unusual, and the reporting gap between the two is the reason to be careful with it.

Bachelor's degrees report $64,798, from 1,855 of 2,639 programs. That is the deepest reporting base in the field and the closest thing to a reliable figure here. Median debt at completion is $23,250, median in-state tuition is $16,033, and the ratio is 36%.

Master's degrees report $92,594, from 931 of 1,490 programs, with median debt of $35,011 at completion, median in-state tuition of $17,977, and a ratio of 38%. Higher earnings, higher debt, and a slightly worse ratio than the bachelor's.

The spread: best and worst programs on the table

The field median hides a range wide enough to make it nearly useless on its own.

At the top, the bachelor's in Business Administration and Management, General at the University of California-Berkeley reports $144,599 four years after completing, against $11,300 of median debt at completion, for a ratio of 8%. The same program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reports $135,874 against $14,239, at 10%. Brigham Young University's bachelor's in Marketing/Marketing Management, General reports $112,596 against $11,000, also 10%.

Two-year programs appear near the top of the value table too, on ratio rather than raw earnings. De Anza College's associate reports $75,297 against $6,500 of debt, at 9%. Del Mar College in Texas runs its associate fully online and reports $49,598 against $4,700, at 9%. Georgia Northwestern Technical College's hybrid associate reports $49,385 against $4,448, at 9%.

The bottom of the table is where this field earns its reputation. Amridge University's master's reports $55,926 four years after completing, against $59,817 of median debt at completion — a ratio of 107%, more borrowed than a full year of earnings. Strayer University's master's programs in the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland each report $76,080 against $75,005, at 99%. Remington College-Online Dallas reports $43,581 for its bachelor's against $45,000 of debt, at 103%. Laurus College in California reports $32,490 for its associate against $33,000, at 102%.

Same broad subject, same nominal credential in several cases, and a range from $32,490 to $144,599. The spread between programs is the finding. The field median is a starting point for narrowing, not an estimate of what any particular program will pay you.

Four years out, not your first job

Four years after completing is the window the federal data uses, and it is the honest one to quote. It captures a graduate after a first promotion or a first job change, which is when marketing pay separates from entry-level pay. First-job offers in this field are lower, sometimes substantially. Reading $66,349 as a starting salary will lead to a bad decision about how much to borrow.

There are people the data does not see. Graduates who took no federal aid are excluded. So is anyone who enrolled and did not complete, and anyone who came into the work through a bootcamp, an internship, or the job itself without a credential. Marketing has more of those people than most fields. That is a real limit on the numbers below, and it is not a reason to discount them: this is still the largest earnings record that exists for named programs at named schools, and no school-published figure is checked as carefully.

How to use this number

Pair the earnings figure with the debt figure, always. Median debt at completion across this field is $24,188, from the 2,989 programs that report it. Set against the $66,349 median, that is a debt-to-earnings ratio of 36%. Median in-state tuition is $16,033. The ratio is the number worth carrying into a conversation with an admissions office, because it is the one a school cannot improve by quoting its most successful graduates.

Compared with the other fields we publish, marketing and business does well. Tech and Development, the highest-earning segment on the site, reports $80,281 at a 28% ratio. Audio and Music Production, the lowest, reports $43,716 at 58%. Marketing sits in the upper half, with a ratio close to what the tech field carries.

Delivery is worth checking before you rule out cheaper options. Across the field, 48% of programs are on campus, 29% are hybrid and 16% are fully online, and 1,472 programs — 21% of the table — can be completed online. Del Mar College's fully online associate reaches a 9% ratio, so distance study is not automatically the expensive path.

Then check the specific program rather than the field. The program finder lists earnings and debt where they are reported, cost breaks down tuition and debt by credential, and best value ranks by the debt-to-earnings ratio rather than by prestige. The field overview collects the field-level figures, and is it worth it sets out the method we use to judge that. The underlying files are public at collegescorecard.ed.gov.

Once you have two or three programs with published numbers you can live with, the next step is asking them the things the federal file does not answer: how the program is staffed, what the placement record looks like, and what the total cost is for your circumstances. You can ask a school about a program directly. We take no placement fees from schools and no school pays to appear on this table.