Criminal Justice and Corrections at Notre Dame College

With fewer than 30 graduates tracked, Notre Dame College's criminal justice program shows concerning numbers that warrant serious consideration. Graduates earned just $29,704 one year out—about $7,000 below Ohio's median for this degree and $8,000 below the national average. That 5th percentile national ranking places it among the lowest-earning programs in the country, and even within Ohio, it sits in just the 25th percentile. To put this in perspective, graduates from similar Ohio programs at Tiffin University or Baldwin Wallace earn 50% more in their first year.

The nearly $27,500 in median debt isn't dramatically higher than benchmarks, but paired with these earnings, it creates a challenging financial start. Graduates are spending almost their entire first-year salary to cover their debt burden—a ratio that typically signals difficulty making payments while covering basic living expenses. The small sample size means these numbers could shift significantly with more data, but the gap between these earnings and both state and national averages is too large to dismiss as statistical noise.

Parents should ask pointed questions: What specific career placements are recent graduates securing, and why might starting salaries lag so far behind other Ohio programs? Without clear evidence of specialized outcomes that justify lower initial earnings, families would be wise to consider the stronger-performing alternatives available throughout the state.