Grand Total, All Reporting Institutions
Associate's Degree (Bachelor Credit)
Wage Outcomes


Commonly referred to as the "college transfer" degree, the primary goal of these programs are to prepare students to transfer from a two-year college to a four-year degree program. From this perspective, these degrees are clearly successful as over 49% of graduates make a such a transfer the year following completion. Further, we know from other studies in Virginia that a number of graduates make the transfer a year later. Of the one-fifth of graduates for whom we have no information, we can comfortably assume that some proportion of those have transferred to out-of-state institutions given the number of Virginia community colleges that are near the state's borders.

Despite the intended nature of the degree, based on our wage data, the transfer degree does have economic value of its own. While the median wages of the transfer degree remain below the median of the career technical degree, they remain significantly above the first quartile of the career technical degree.



Wage Outcomes, 2020 Calendar Year
Grand Total, All Reporting Institutions, Associate's Degree (Bachelor Credit)
Earnings in 2020Median WagePercentage of Graduates w/ Reported Wage
20 Years (1999-00 Graduates) $57,68247%
15 Years (2004-05 Graduates) $54,63149%
10 Years (2009-10 Graduates) $51,18752%
8 Years (2011-12 Graduates) $47,72652%
5 Years (2014-15 Graduates) $41,19253%
3 Years (2016-17 Graduates) $30,52953%
18 Months (2018-19 Graduates) $18,39149%
Only years/programs meeting disclosure rules will be displayed to protect individual confidentiality.

Wages in 2020
Years Post-Completion10th Percentile25th PercentileMedian75th Percentile90th Percentile
80% of graduates with full-time wages fall within this range
20 Years (1999-00 Graduates) $23,275$41,481$57,682$85,685$127,921
15 Years (2004-05 Graduates) $22,519$38,736$54,631$83,007$122,531
10 Years (2009-10 Graduates) $20,734$35,235$51,187$74,355$107,442
8 Years (2011-12 Graduates) $18,606$31,893$47,726$69,220$98,815
5 Years (2014-15 Graduates) $13,997$25,829$41,192$58,574$80,047
3 Years (2016-17 Graduates) $9,301$17,527$30,529$47,166$66,696
18 Months (2018-19 Graduates) $4,909$9,580$18,391$33,064$50,870

As reminder, the median value represents the very middle value of the sample of values (wage or debt) sorted from low to high. This value is found in the middle line of the barcharts.
The remaining values in the chart are constructed similarly, to display how wages and earnings are distributed. Thus, while the median tells us the middle wage, the values for the 25th and 75th percentiles tell us that half of the graduates with wages fall between those two values. Likewise, 80% of reported wages fall between the 10th and 90th percentiles. The length of each bar section clue to the dispersion in the data - that is, how much earnings can vary within a range a group of individuals.
Top 10 Largest Programs at Associate's Degree (Bachelor Credit) Level, 2020 Median Wages Three Years Post-Completion
InstitutionProgram TitleMedian Wage
Northern Virginia Community CollegeGeneral Studies (240102)$34,499
Northern Virginia Community CollegeBusiness Administration and Management, General (520201)$41,985
Tidewater Community CollegeSocial Sciences, General (450101)$27,377
Germanna Community CollegeLiberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies (240101)$29,404
Northern Virginia Community CollegeSocial Sciences, General (450101)$29,406
Laurel Ridge Community CollegeLiberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies (240101)$29,754
Southside Virginia Community CollegeLiberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies (240101)$19,926
Northern Virginia Community CollegeHumanities/Humanistic Studies (240103)$29,248
Northern Virginia Community CollegeBiological and Physical Sciences (300101)$24,337
Liberty UniversityMulti-/Interdisciplinary Studies, Other (309999)$42,131

NOTE: Fewer than 10 programs may be displayed if they disclosure rules for providing wage outcome data are not met.
Top 25 Programs by Enrollment
Top 25 Programs by Degrees Awarded


Graduate Debt
Associate's Degree (Bachelor Credit)
Student Loans



Known Debt at Graduation of Student Borrowers
Year% of grads25th PercentileMedianEstimated Payment on Median DebtMean75th Percentile
2017-1838%$6,186$12,368$131$15,907$22,251
2018-1937%$5,500$11,745$125$15,464$20,989
2019-2035%$5,691$11,484$122$15,301$20,832
2020-2134%$5,691$11,670$124$15,096$20,367
2021-2230%$5,500$10,888$115$14,807$20,015

Note: The four-year bachelor’s degree mean and median debt levels reported on this site may differ from that reported by individual institutions. Many institutions report indebtedness based on the Common Data Set definition, which limits the indebtedness level reported to include only those students who entered the institution as first-time in college (FTIC) students. The inclusion of graduates who entered as transfer students may tend to lower the overall mean or median debt level because it does not include any debt that transfer students acquired while attending previous institutions outside Virginia and relatively few transfers from Virginia’s two-year colleges incur debt prior to transfer. Repayment estimates assume a standard 10-year repayment rate, and a 5% interest rate for undegraduate loans (for which multiple interest rates exist) and 6.8% for graduate and professional programs. Borrowers with federal loans may be eligible for Income Driven Repayment, which may result in lower payments.


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