Notre Dame Theatre (Bachelor's): Tuition, Graduate Salary, and Debt
- Bachelor's in Drama/Theatre Arts and Stagecraft
- Private nonprofit university
- Notre Dame, IN
- About 61 graduates a year
College Scorecard June 2026 release · BLS wages May 2025
The short answer
Notre Dame theatre graduates earn more than graduates of most theatre programs nationally, $37,531 in their first year. Where this program stands out is debt. The typical graduate leaves with $19,000 in federal loans, less than at 86% of theatre programs in the country. It is one of the higher-paying theatre degrees in Indiana.
How it compares
Each figure is the median for graduates of the program. The Indiana and national columns are the medians across all theatre bachelor's programs that report the figure.
Five years out, Notre Dame graduates earn more than the national figure and about $29,973 more than the Indiana median.
Debt and first-year pay at every Indiana theatre program
Programs in the upper left give graduates higher pay for less debt. Dashed lines mark the Indiana medians.
Hover over or tap a dot to see the school. Only programs that report both earnings and debt are shown.
What graduates earn over time
Pay rises about 67% between the first and fifth year.
Year 1 and year 5 figures come from different graduating classes, so the growth rate is an estimate.
Does family income change the outcome?
Graduates who received Pell Grants, which go to students from lower-income families, earned more in their first year than other graduates. At this program, the outcome does not look worse for students with less money.
Paying back the loans
On a standard 10-year plan, the median debt means a payment of about $201 a month, or 6.4% of a graduate's typical monthly pay in the first year.
The government publishes these as ranges to protect privacy. They were measured in 2018 to 2020, partly during the pandemic pause on federal loan payments, so the forbearance share may be higher than usual. Separately, 19 parents took out Parent PLUS loans for these students, with a median of $44,718.
Where graduates work, and what the pay is worth
Prices in the South Bend area are about 7% below the national average, so a $37,531 salary here buys what about $40,418 buys in a typical US city.
Careers this field leads to
These are the jobs that the federal crosswalk from fields of study to occupations links to theatre, largest first. Pay is the median across all experience levels.
Producers and Directors
$59,870Median pay in Indiana. 1,480 people work in this job in Indiana. Nationally, jobs are projected to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035, with about 12,100 openings a year. Typical education to start: bachelor's degree, plus less than 5 years of related work experience.
Writers and Authors
$75,820Median pay in Indiana. 450 people work in this job in Indiana. Nationally, jobs are projected to stay about the same in number from 2025 to 2035, with about 11,900 openings a year. Typical education to start: bachelor's degree.
About Notre Dame
Theatre ranks 28th of 32 bachelor's programs at Notre Dame by first-year earnings. The top three are Finance ($99,222), Computer and Information Science ($96,517), and Other Mathematics ($89,689).
Other theatre bachelor's programs near Notre Dame
Common questions
The median graduate earns $37,531 one year after graduating and $62,555 five years after. The median across theatre bachelor's programs in Indiana is $23,748.
The median federal loan balance is $19,000, which ranks the lowest of 5 theatre bachelor's programs in Indiana. That works out to about $201 a month over 10 years.
On the numbers, yes for most students. Debt equals 51% of first-year earnings, against a national median of 115%.
About this data
- Earnings and debt only include students who received federal financial aid (grants or loans).
- Earnings only count graduates who were working and not enrolled in more school. Graduates who went straight to further study are not included.
- Debt only includes federal loans. Private loans and credit cards are not counted.
- Some schools with several campuses report one combined figure for all of them. We count each of those schools once, and leave them out of Indiana comparisons when their main campus is in another state.
- Scorecard figures describe graduating classes from several years ago. BLS wages are from May 2025.
- School-level numbers like tuition, admission rate, and graduation rate are for the whole school, not the theatre program.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard, field of study and institution files, June 2026 release
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2025 to 2035
- Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024
- NCES, CIP 2020 to SOC 2018 crosswalk, and IPEDS institution directory, 2024