Verified Federal Data · No Paid Rankings
Best Colleges for Communications
Top communications, journalism, and media programs ranked by graduate earnings, completion rates, and actual cost. Federal data. No paid rankings.
How We Rank Communications Schools
These rankings filter to schools with communications and media programs, then rank by our 5-component composite score using verified federal data. Rankings use a composite score: graduate earnings (28%), graduation rate (25%), social mobility via Pell Grant share (20%), debt burden (15%), and net cost for low-income students (12%). Where a school has not reported one of these, that component is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled rather than filled in with an estimate. Only 4-year non-profit schools with sufficient data qualify.
- →Earnings: Median annual earnings 10 years after enrollment. Source: College Scorecard.
- →Graduation rate: Full-time first-time students completing within 150% of normal time. Source: IPEDS.
- →Net price: Average annual cost after all grants and scholarships. Source: IPEDS.
- →Social mobility: Share of students receiving Pell Grants, a direct measure of access for low-income students. Source: IPEDS.
- →Debt burden: Median federal loan debt at graduation. Source: College Scorecard.
Top 10 Communications Schools (2026)
Ranked by composite: earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.
| # | School | Earnings (10yr) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  CUNY Bernard M Baruch College New York, NY | $75,971 |
| 2 | Berea College Berea, KY | $43,150 |
| 3 |  Brown University Providence, RI | $93,487 |
| 4 |  CUNY City College New York, NY | $66,039 |
| 5 |  Brigham Young University Provo, UT | $75,790 |
| 6 |  Bentley University Waltham, MA | $120,959 |
| 7 |  California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA | $90,768 |
| 8 |  Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA | $114,862 |
| 9 |  California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA | $62,951 |
| 10 |  California State University-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA | $59,211 |
173 schools with Communications programs in dataset. Top 10 shown. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.
All 173 Colleges in the Dataset
The ranking above shows the top 10 by composite score. Every school in the full dataset is listed here so you can explore beyond the top results.
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