Quick answer:UX design degrees usually cover user research, interaction design, prototyping and usability testing at bachelor’s or master’s level. The federal occupation most UX work is counted in, web and digital interface designers, reports a median $104,000 with a projected change of 7.0 percent through 2034 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Coursework, how this differs from graphic design, and pay are below.
What the Coursework Usually Covers
User research methods - interviews, contextual inquiry, surveys, and how to tell a finding from an anecdote
Interaction design - information architecture, flows, states, and the behaviour of an interface over time
Prototyping - low and high fidelity, design systems, and enough front-end markup to hand work over cleanly
Usability testing - task design, moderation, sample sizing, and reporting results people will act on
Visual and accessibility fundamentals - typography, layout, colour and contrast, plus accessibility standards as a design constraint
Cognitive psychology - attention, memory and error, which is the part that separates this from a styling course
Ask whether the research coursework uses real participants. A program that teaches usability testing only as theory leaves you with the vocabulary and none of the practice, and the practice is what an employer will probe.
Why This Is Not the Graphic Design Page
UX design sits under CIP 11.0105 and 50.0411, the human-computer interaction and interaction design codes, awarded by 124 institutions at bachelor’s or master’s level (IPEDS Completions, 2024). Graphic design sits under a different code and is covered separately on this site, along with the graphic design career guide.
The two overlap in tooling and diverge in purpose. Graphic design is asked to communicate something. UX design is asked to make something work, which means it owns research, flows and testing rather than only surfaces. That difference shows up in the federal wage data with unusual clarity: web and digital interface designers report a median of $104,000, and graphic designers report $62,960 (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
The projections diverge too. Interface designers are projected to change by 7.0 percent through 2034 while graphic designers are projected to change by 2.1 percent (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Someone searching for UX training and landing on a graphic design page would see a school list assembled around visual communication departments, which is not where interaction design programs live.
Before you request information anywhere, ask what the research component actually involves and what a graduating portfolio looks like. With that filter set, compare online UX design programs enrolling now:
Colleges Offering This Degree
Every school listed is verified in federal IPEDS data both to award this degree and to offer programs that can be completed entirely by distance education at this level. Whether this exact degree is delivered fully online varies by school, so confirm the format before you apply.
How we rank schools – graduation rate, graduate earnings, cost and retention.
Advertising plays no part.
This page lists 10 schools, closest group first, then ordered by
BOC Score with the highest at the top.
10 of them carry a score.
LOCAL RANK
Location / proximity to this page
Defines the local group
Graduation rate how often students finish
30%
Median earnings, 10 years after entry whether it paid off
25%
Average net price what students actually pay after aid; lower ranks higher
20%
Retention rate how many come back for year two
15%
Fully online availability whether you can study while working
10%
Scores come from IPEDS (2024) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard.
Earnings are for all graduates of a school, not one program, so treat them as a signal
about the institution rather than about this subject.
Sponsored listings are paid placements and are labelled as such; they are separate from
this ranking and never change it. Read the full methodology.
People who notice when things are badly designed and can say why. That is not a personality quirk in this field, it is the aptitude. The degree gives it method and vocabulary.
Tradespeople who have serviced equipment in the field. Anyone who has repaired the same failure caused by the same confusing control on the same machine has already done the core observation of UX work: watching a real person fail at something the designer assumed was obvious.
Designers already working visually who want to move upstream. The wage and growth data above is the case for adding research and interaction to a visual skill set rather than deepening the visual side alone.
Credit transfer is decided by the receiving institution and genuinely varies, so request a written transfer evaluation before you enroll.
The Supply Problem Cuts Both Ways
124 institutions awarding this credential is a small number, and it has two consequences worth naming.
The first is that program quality varies more than it does in mature fields. UX degrees have been assembled out of computer science departments, design schools and information schools, and the resulting curricula are not comparable. Two programs with the same name can differ by most of their credit hours. Read the course list rather than the description.
The second is that the credential is not the only accepted entry route. UX hiring is portfolio-first to a greater degree than most computing fields, and practitioners arrive from adjacent disciplines routinely. That makes the degree a way of building a portfolio under supervision, with research method attached, rather than a gate you must pass.
Which of those readings applies to you depends on what you already have. Someone with no design work to show benefits considerably from the structure. Someone with several years of visual work may be buying the research methods and the master’s-level credential specifically.
Is It Worth It?
The case for is the wage gap. A median of $104,000 against $62,960 for graphic design is a large difference for two fields that share tools, and the projections point the same direction: 7.0 percent against 2.1 percent (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34).
The case against is scale. About 9,100 openings a year is a narrow door, and the occupation is concentrated in technology employers and larger organizations rather than spread evenly. Design roles are also among the first cut when hiring slows. Outcomes vary.
Web and digital interface designers earn a median $104,000 across employment of 113,330, with a projected change of 7.0 percent through 2034 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34).
UX Design at a Glance
Metric
Detail
Source
Median annual wage
$104,000
BLS OEWS, May 2025
Mean annual wage
$117,490
BLS OEWS, May 2025
Wage range
$53,750 (10th pct) - $201,550 (90th pct)
BLS OEWS, May 2025
Employment
113,330 web and digital interface designers
BLS OEWS, May 2025
Projected change (2024-34)
7.0%, about 9,100 openings per year
BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34
Typical credential
Bachelor’s, with master’s common for research roles
Program catalogs
Institutions awarding
124
IPEDS Completions, 2024
Geo coverage
State, metro and city pages - see Programs by State below
Site structure
SOC codes covered
15-1255 web and digital interface designers; 27-1024 graphic designers
BLS OEWS, May 2025
Interface Design Against Graphic Design
Role
Median
25th percentile
75th percentile
Employment
Projected change
Web and digital interface designers
$104,000
$73,290
$158,820
113,330
7.0%
Graphic designers
$62,960
$49,040
$81,830
197,830
2.1%
All wage and employment figures BLS OEWS, May 2025; growth figures BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34.
Graphic design is the larger occupation at employment of 197,830 and generates about 20,000 openings a year, so it is easier to enter and pays substantially less at every point in the distribution. The interface design row is smaller, better paid and growing faster. A UX degree is a bet on the second row, and the coursework that makes the bet pay is the research and interaction sequence rather than the visual sequence.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do UX designers make?
Most UX work is counted federally under web and digital interface designers, at a median annual wage of $104,000 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The bottom 10 percent earn $53,750 or less and the top 10 percent earn $201,550 or more, across employment of 113,330.
Is UX design a growing field?
Web and digital interface designer employment is projected to change by 7.0 percent from 2024 to 2034, from 128,900 to 137,900, with about 9,100 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). That is steady growth in a small occupation.
How is a UX design degree different from a graphic design degree?
UX design sits under CIP 11.0105 and 50.0411, the human-computer interaction and interaction design codes, awarded by 124 institutions at bachelor's or master's level (IPEDS Completions, 2024). Graphic design sits under a separate visual communication code. The pay gap is the clearest signal: interface designers report a median of $104,000 against $62,960 for graphic designers (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
Do you need to code to work in UX?
Not usually to a professional standard, but the designers who can read and modify front-end code tend to work faster and argue better with engineers. Most programs include enough prototyping and markup to make that possible without turning the degree into a development degree.
How many schools offer this degree?
124 institutions awarded CIP 11.0105 or 50.0411 at bachelor's or master's level in 2024 (IPEDS Completions, 2024). It is a comparatively small category, and the programs vary a great deal in whether they lean toward research methods or toward visual craft.
Can you study UX design online?
Yes. The tools are all software, critique works over video, and usability testing can be run remotely, which is how a great deal of professional research is run anyway. Ask whether the program requires real participants for its research coursework.
Is this a realistic move from a trade?
It can be, for a particular kind of person. UX is fundamentally about how people misuse things that were designed without watching them, which anyone who has serviced equipment abused in the field already understands. The route requires a bachelor's rather than an associate degree. Individual outcomes may vary.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 - Web and Digital Interface Designers (SOC 15-1255), Graphic Designers (SOC 27-1024)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, 2024-34
U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS Completions, 2024 - CIP 11.0105, CIP 50.0411
About this guide: Researched and written by the TradeCareerPath Editorial Team. Our editorial team researches and sources every trade school and career guide using federal labor and education data, including BLS OEWS and Employment Projections, DOL apprenticeship records, IPEDS, College Scorecard, and state licensing boards. We follow the editorial standards documented at /editorial-policy/.
