Design and Applied Arts at Longwood University

Longwood's Design and Applied Arts program lands squarely in the middle of Virginia's offerings, earning $35,612 for recent graduates—slightly above both the state and national medians. That's respectable positioning among the state's 10 programs, though it's worth noting the sample size here is small, meaning future cohorts could perform quite differently. The debt load of $25,625 is also right at the state median, creating a manageable debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.72 that suggests graduates can reasonably handle their loan payments on a designer's starting salary.

The bigger picture: this program won't make your child rich (design fields rarely do immediately after graduation), but it's performing competitively with peer institutions. Virginia Tech's design graduates earn substantially more at $46,761, but they're also coming from a more selective engineering-focused environment. Longwood's outcomes look similar to Radford and notably better than VCU, despite VCU's stronger reputation in arts and design.

For a family comfortable with the inherent financial realities of creative fields, this represents a reasonable path—but the small cohort size means you're buying into less certainty than data-rich programs offer. If your child is passionate about design and Longwood feels like the right fit socially and academically, these numbers shouldn't discourage you. Just understand they'll need to be strategic about finding employment, as with any creative field.