Public Relations, Advertising, and Applied Communication at Notre Dame of Maryland University

For a field where starting salaries hover around $40,000 nationally, carrying $25,832 in debt creates immediate financial pressure. Both figures here are estimates drawn from peer programs, since Notre Dame of Maryland's graduate sample is too small for the Department of Education to publish actual outcomes. What we can see from Maryland's limited landscape is sobering: the state's median for communications majors sits at just $28,091, nearly $12,000 below the national figure this estimate assumes.

That gap matters because communications careers in different markets pay vastly different wages, and Baltimore isn't New York or DC when it comes to agency salaries. If graduates from this program track closer to Maryland's actual outcomes rather than the national baseline, that debt load becomes harder to manage—a $28,000 salary makes a $26,000 debt feel considerably heavier. The school serves a substantial population of Pell-eligible students (32%), and communications degrees typically require time in low-paid or unpaid internships before landing that first job.

Without actual outcome data for this specific program, you're investing based on hope that graduates will match national performance rather than state patterns. Given Maryland's documented struggles with communications earnings and the uncertainty around both the debt and salary figures here, this program carries significant financial risk that won't clarify until well after enrollment decisions are made.