Fine and Studio Arts at Mount Holyoke College

That $18,420 first-year salary—barely above minimum wage for full-time work—should raise immediate concerns, even accounting for the small sample size that makes these figures less reliable. While Mount Holyoke commands a premium as a selective liberal arts college (38% admission rate, 1422 average SAT), its studio arts graduates earn roughly $5,000 less than the Massachusetts median and $6,000 below the national average for this degree. The comparison to UMass campuses is particularly stark: their fine arts graduates earn double what Mount Holyoke's do.

The debt picture amplifies the problem. At $23,447, graduates face obligations that exceed their entire first-year salary—a 1.27 debt-to-earnings ratio that makes basic living expenses plus loan payments mathematically challenging in expensive Massachusetts. When your monthly loan payment could consume 15-20% of your take-home pay, you're looking at years of financial constraint or likely reliance on family support.

The caveat here matters: with under 30 graduates in this dataset, these numbers might not reflect typical outcomes. Perhaps many are pursuing unpaid internships, graduate school, or freelance work that doesn't show up in Department of Education earnings data. But even with that uncertainty, the gap between Mount Holyoke's tuition investment and these documented outcomes is too large to ignore without serious questions about post-graduation support, career preparation, and whether this particular program justifies its cost premium over state universities.