Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies and Humanities at Franciscan University of Steubenville

This is one of those rare cases where an associate's degree in liberal arts significantly outperforms expectations—but the small sample size (under 30 graduates) means these results may not be typical. Franciscan's program shows $43,602 first-year earnings, placing it in the 95th percentile nationally and 80th percentile within Ohio. That's $10,000 above the state median and $16,000 above the national median for this degree. The $20,199 debt load is relatively high for an associate's (95th percentile), but with a debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.46, graduates are earning enough to manage it comfortably—well below the concerning 1.0 threshold.

What explains these unusually strong earnings? It's worth investigating whether this program serves as a transfer pathway to bachelor's completion, whether graduates are leveraging the university's network into better-than-typical jobs, or whether a few high earners are skewing a small dataset. The limited sample means next year's cohort could look quite different. Still, the combination of manageable debt and strong early earnings suggests graduates aren't struggling financially, even if the program itself doesn't guarantee these results for everyone.

If your student is considering this route, understand you're looking at limited data that may not predict their individual outcome. The numbers look encouraging, but verify what career paths recent graduates actually took and whether those align with your student's goals.