Good salary, little to no debt: California college guide to top-value majors

Edgar Roa was mostly raised by an immigrant mother without a high school degree, surviving on welfare benefits as his family frequently moved around Southern California in pursuit of affordable housing.

But he is poised to graduate next spring with a degree in a medical field with median earnings of $126,318 five years after graduation, and from a university with an average net cost of just $4,000 annually. Those low tuition costs and high earnings — along with his GI Bill benefits and a federal Pell Grant — will enable Roa to graduate debt free and transform the future of his family.

He attends Cal State Dominguez Hills, one of the state’s most effective campuses in delivering top payoffs to low-income students, according to a new report. Among 28 programs examined at Dominguez Hills, 23 delivered earnings high enough to recoup the cost of the degree in a year or less — including registered nursing at $122,899, business at $61,910 and teacher education at $43,988.

As more people question the value of higher education, the report released Thursday provides clear data on how much graduates enrolled in 2,695 degree and certificate programs at 324 California colleges and universities earn after five years compared with a high school graduate. The data show the net educational cost and how quickly students can recoup their educational investment.

About 260,000 graduates who received federal financial aid were examined in the report, which was commissioned by the nonprofit, Oakland-based College Futures Foundation and conducted by the HEA Group, a research and consulting firm focused on college access, value and economic mobility, using federal and institutional data.

“We know that attending college can be one of the largest investments that anyone makes beyond getting a mortgage,” said Michael Itzkowitz, the HEA Group’s president, who wrote the report. “So it’s critical that we have all of the data in front of us to ensure that we’re making the most informed choice possible.”

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the college foundation president, said more people are skeptical about higher education because they fail to see a “clear connection” between educational costs and the economic outcome.

“The No. 1 reason people go to college is to improve their economic mobility and the No. 1 reason they don’t go is the cost,” Oakley said. “This study offers a critical first step in helping state policymakers as well as institutional leaders identify what’s working but also what can work better to ensure strong financial outcomes for all who choose to pursue a postsecondary education.”

Majors can be more important than college name

The data show that majors are often more important than institutions — and that community colleges and California State University campuses can deliver attractive postgraduate earnings to low-income students without drowning them in debt.

Firefighter recruits run from the classroom to ladder training at Santa Ana College’s Basic Fire Academy in Huntington Beach.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Among nine four-year institutions with strong returns on investments and more than 50% of students receiving Pell Grants because of their low incomes, eight are CSU campuses and the other is UC Merced. The CSU campuses are Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fresno, Northridge, San Bernardino, Sacramento and Stanislaus.

After five years on the job, a Santa Ana College graduate of the fire protection program, for instance, makes a median annual salary of $114,446 after net costs of just $2,994 for the two-year education. That’s twice as much as a Stanford University graduate in the English language and literature program, who earned $56,399 and spent a net $43,404 for the four-year degree. The net cost reflects a program’s expense after grant and scholarship aid.

The “earnings premium” in the report shows how much more college graduates earn when compared with those with only a high school diploma. The median pay for high school graduates five years later is $26,073.

William Reardon, associate dean of Santa Ana College’s fire technology department, said demand is growing for firefighters as more of them age out of the field and climate change fuels more wildfires. Annual enrollment in fire technology courses and continuing education has grown by 16% to 12,300 in 2023-24 compared with the previous year. And the admission rate to the program is 100%, he said. The program offers degree pathways to become firefighters, fire inspectors and administrators.

Underscoring the importance of majors, the top-earning UCLA degree was computer and information sciences. These graduates pulled in an annual median salary of $218,770 and would be able to recoup the net four-year educational cost of $62,548 in about four months.

But graduates of UCLA’s drama, theater arts and stagecraft program earned only $28,993 annually — barely above a high school graduate’s median pay — and it would take 21 years to recoup the cost of the degree, according to the report.

Elite colleges still count when comparing the return on investment among institutions in the same field. A Stanford computer science degree commands $247,797 annually, compared with $83,688 for a similar degree from Cal State Bakersfield.

Clinical science students at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

(Matt Brown / CSUDH)

Among business majors, a UC Berkeley degree brings in $145,003 after five years, more than twice as high as a Cal State L.A. one at $64,019.

Oakley, however, said that “brand name” universities tend to be far less accessible to the vast majority of Californians, particularly those who are low-income. Only 18.8% of Stanford students are Pell Grant recipients, compared with 27.1% at Berkeley and 66.2% at Cal State L.A., the report showed.

“Based on the earnings data, we see there are a plethora of options for students to consider outside of the top named schools readily recognized in popular news publications … which can create potentially false narratives about value based on brand,” Oakley said. “ ‘Brand name’ institutions are not interested in serving California’s lowest-income learners in any great number.”

He called on the most selective UC campuses — L.A., Berkeley and San Diego — “to reach deeper into the pool of applicants” and admit more low-income students.

“We should be rewarding institutions for how well they do to open up more access to the lowest-income Californians,” he said. “That’s what our public universities were built for.”

Recouping education costs

Overall, nearly 9 in 10 programs across California allow their graduates to recoup their educational costs in five years or less.

But graduates of 112 programs were still making less than a high school graduate even five years after earning their degree or certificate. These were mostly certificate programs at for-profit institutions — many of them offering cosmetology programs. That field did not fare well even for those with two-year associate degrees from community colleges: Cosmetologists from Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, for instance, earned only $13,200 annually, half the median pay of high school graduates.

Oakley suggested that educational leaders look for ways to improve the return on low-performing programs — using more apprenticeships, for instance, rather than higher-priced college certificates and degrees.

“It’s critical that students not only investigate the institution that they’re applying to, but also the field of study that they’re looking to consider,” Itzkowitz said.

High-paying college programs

The fields with the highest return on investment included computer science, engineering and healthcare. Registered nursing is a particularly hot field, with most graduates of two-year community college programs earning six-figure salaries after five years. Nursing shortages continue to drive up pay, with 13-week contracts for traveling nurses offering $3,000 a week or more.

Firefighter recruits take an exam before ladder training at Santa Ana College’s Basic Fire Academy in Huntington Beach.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

But demand for nursing degrees far outstrips capacity. Santa Ana College, for instance, receives 450 to 600 applications each semester for about 40 seats, said Quynh Mayer, an associate professor of nursing. A major bottleneck is limitations by hospitals on the number of student nurses they will accept for on-the-job training, she said.

Rao’s high-paying clinical science program at Dominguez Hills, however, is far more accessible. About 90% of applicants are accepted into the program, which trains students to examine blood, spinal fluid and other lab results to identify and diagnose potential disease, said Payman Nasr, an associate professor and department chair. After their degree program, students need to complete a 52-week internship, then pass a national board exam to become clinical laboratory scientists.

Nearly half of the students are the first in their families to attend college, and many are low-income — a huge point of pride for the university, Nasr said.

Rao, for one, could not afford to go straight to college from high school and did not want to go into debt, so he enlisted in the Navy — in part to qualify for the GI Bill benefits that would pay for his education. As he researched post-service careers, he figured the healthcare field would have plenty of jobs and good pay.

He chose Dominguez Hills over UC Irvine, which offered him admission to its chemistry program. Despite UC’s greater prestige, he said, Dominguez Hills offered a better and more practical fit with specific career training in clinical lab science.

His decision may also prove to be a more lucrative choice. According to the report, a UC Irvine graduate in chemistry made $72,001 after five years — compared with $126,318 for Roa’s Cal State degree.