When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in general agriculture sits in the middle of the road, ranking #178 out of 343 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for general agriculture students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 60 master's degrees in general agriculture during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to general agriculture students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general agriculture students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for general agriculture to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general agriculture related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general agriculture students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best General Agriculture Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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It's hard to beat University of Nebraska - Lincoln if you want to pursue a master's degree in general agriculture. UNL is a very large public university located in the large city of Lincoln.
After graduation, agriculture master's recipients generally earn about $50,894 in their early careers.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
