$66,349 four years out on $24,188 of debt. Price, not the subject, is what breaks the trade.

What marketing graduates earn four years out

Marketing and business graduates report a median of $66,349 four years after completing. That is the second-highest figure of the six fields this site covers. Tech and development reports $80,281. Audio and music production, at the bottom, reports $43,716. The distance between the best-paid and the worst-paid field is $36,565, and marketing sits in the upper half of it.

The figure comes from the 3,489 programs that report an earnings median to the College Scorecard. The field runs to 6,898 programs at 2,516 institutions and awards about 379,041 credentials a year, so 51% of programs report earnings at all. The federal files suppress a median when too few aided completers sit behind it. Half the field is therefore missing from every number on this page.

Say the rest of the limits once. The data cannot separate freelance and contract income from salary. It cannot see anyone who enrolled and left before finishing, because every earnings figure here is for people who completed. And it cannot see the people who never enrolled, which matters more in this field than in most: marketing, sales and communications roles have no protected title, and they are filled every day by people holding an unrelated degree or none. That is the boundary of the evidence. It is not an excuse, and an outcome nobody measures is not a better outcome than one measured badly.

One more thing is worth knowing before the numbers mean anything. Most of what gets called a marketing degree is filed under business codes. The Business Administration group accounts for 4,931 programs. Organizational Leadership accounts for 1,414 and Marketing for 1,385, with Project & Operations Management at 1,264, Retail & Sales Management at 617, Public Relations & Advertising at 441 and Digital Marketing & E-Commerce at 201. At federal code level the split is starker: Business Administration, Management and Operations (CIP 5202) covers 5,032 programs, Marketing (CIP 5214) covers 1,425, and Public Relations, Advertising, and Applied Communication (CIP 0909) covers 441. A reader asking about a marketing degree is being answered mostly by business administration programs, and the two are priced and paid differently at the level of the individual school.

Debt at completion, and the debt-to-earnings ratio

Median debt at completion is $24,188, reported by 2,989 programs. Set against the field's earnings median, that is a ratio of 36%: what a graduate owes on the day they finish is a little over a third of what they earn in a year, four years later.

That is the second-best ratio of the six fields, and the reason is earnings rather than restraint. Audio and music production borrows a median of $25,496 against $43,716 in earnings, a ratio of 58%. Game design borrows $26,000 against $48,144, a ratio of 54%. Design and digital art borrows $25,048 against $48,893, a ratio of 51%. Film and video borrows $23,250 against $46,553, a ratio of 50%. Tech and development borrows $22,780 against $80,281, a ratio of 28%. Borrowing barely moves across the six fields. Pay moves by $36,565.

Price is the other half of it. Median published in-state tuition in marketing and business is $16,033 a year, against $27,992 in design and digital art, $27,530 in game design, $26,684 in film and video and $24,295 in audio and music production. Only tech and development is cheaper, at $14,624. A low sticker price and comparatively high pay is the entire advantage this field has, and it is a real one. Tuition and borrowing by credential are laid out on the cost page.

Bachelor's vs master's: is the graduate degree worth the second loan?

The bachelor's is the best-evidenced cell in the data: 2,639 programs, 1,855 of them reporting earnings, a median of $64,798 four years after completing on median debt of $23,250 at completion. The ratio is 36%, the same as the field as a whole.

The master's reports 1,490 programs, 931 of them reporting earnings, a median of $92,594 on median debt of $35,011 at completion. That is the largest credential step in this field by a distance, and the ratio still moves the wrong way, to 38%. The extra pay is real. So is the second loan, and the loan grows a little faster than the earnings do.

Below the bachelor's, the ranking inverts. Associate degrees account for 1,484 programs and report $48,863 in median earnings on $14,087 in median debt, a ratio of 29%, from 571 reporting programs. Undergraduate certificates account for 1,285 programs and report $50,363 on $13,326, a ratio of 26% — the best ratio in the field, drawn from only 132 reporting programs. That is the thinnest evidence anywhere in this data. Read the certificate line as a signal, not a settled figure.

So the two-year credentials return the best ratios and the least money, and the master's returns the most money and the worst ratio. The graduate degree is worth the second loan on this evidence when an employer is paying part of it, or when it is bought at or near the $17,977 median in-state tuition for a master's. It is the hardest credential to justify at a private-sector price on borrowed money, because the worst outcomes in this field are master's degrees.

The programs at the bottom of the table

Amridge University reports a master's in Business Administration and Management, General with median debt of $59,817 at completion against median earnings of $55,926 four years after completing. That is a ratio of 107%: more borrowed than earned in a year. Remington College-Online Dallas reports a bachelor's in the same subject at $45,000 against $43,581, a ratio of 103%. Laurus College reports an associate degree at $33,000 against $32,490, a ratio of 102%.

The clearest case is Strayer University. Three of its campuses — District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland — report the same master's in Business Administration and Management, General, each with median debt of $75,005 against median earnings of $76,080. That is 99%, and those earnings sit above the field median of $66,349. The graduates are doing fine in the labor market. The price is what breaks the trade, and no amount of earning fixes a debt figure set that high.

The top of the table is the same arithmetic run the other way. The University of California-Berkeley reports a bachelor's in Business Administration and Management, General at $144,599 four years after completing on median debt of $11,300, a ratio of 8%. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reports $135,874 on $14,239, a ratio of 10%. Brigham Young University reports $112,596 on $11,000 in Marketing/Marketing Management, General, also 10%. Those three are selective institutions with large aid budgets, and the figures reflect who was admitted as much as what was taught.

The community colleges are the more useful lesson, because their admissions are open and their prices are reproducible. De Anza College reports an associate degree at $75,297 on median debt of $6,500, a ratio of 9%. Del Mar College, fully online, reports $49,598 on $4,700, also 9%. Georgia Northwestern Technical College, hybrid, reports $49,385 on $4,448, again 9%. Modest earnings and almost no debt produce a better ratio than a well-paid degree bought at a bad price. The best-value ranking sorts the whole field on the ratio rather than on earnings, which is the order that matters to the person paying.

Who it's worth it for

On this evidence the degree is worth it for someone buying a bachelor's at close to the $16,033 median in-state price, and for someone taking a two-year credential at a public college and going to work. Both routes land near or below the field's 36% ratio, and both are ordinary rather than exceptional. It is worth it for the master's candidate whose employer funds part of the tuition, or who is admitted to a program priced near the in-state median. It is not worth it, on any credential, at a private-sector price paid entirely with loans. The bottom of the table is not a list of unusual bad luck. It is a list of prices.

Delivery is worth checking against your own constraints. Campus programs are 48% of the field, 3,282 of them. Another 1,968 are hybrid, 29%, with 1,074 fully online, 16%, and 398 offering both, 6%. The remaining 176 report no delivery mode, 3%. In total 1,472 programs list an online option, 21% of the field. That is a larger online share than the creative fields carry, and Del Mar College shows the online route can produce one of the best ratios in the data rather than one of the worst.

What the numbers cannot decide is which of these programs you would actually finish, or whether the subject holds your attention for two to four years. The general framework for weighing that against the money is in is it worth it.

These are medians for a field of 6,898 programs. Your decision is one program, at one institution, at one price. Start from the marketing and business hub, check the reported earnings and debt for the specific programs on your shortlist in the program finder, and then ask a school about a program. We publish this data independently, no school pays to appear, and we take no placement fees.