Accounting is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #10 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 11 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Accounting Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 504 master's degrees in accounting to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA - Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA - Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Accounting" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "AS in Accounting" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "AS in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA in Accounting" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Accounting" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA - Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA - Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Accounting" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 13
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 8 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 8
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 5 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of accounting for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality accounting program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on accounting students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other accounting students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for accounting 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 accounting related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for accounting students working on their master's degree.
The accounting school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Accounting Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "business-management-marketing-sales//accounting"
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in accounting needs to take a look at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Located in the small city of Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the accounting program earn around $68,449 for their early career.
It's hard to beat Appalachian State University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in accounting. Appalachian State is a very large public university located in the town of Boone.
Students who graduate with their master's from the accounting program report average early career earnings of $64,438.
It's hard to beat East Carolina University if you want to pursue a master's degree in accounting. Located in the city of Greenville, ECU is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the accounting program report average early career income of $65,574.
UNCW is a large public university located in the city of Wilmington.
Those accounting students who get their master's degree from University of North Carolina at Wilmington make $5,565 more than the standard accounting student.
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).
Your choice of accounting for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality accounting program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
