Ranked #10 in popularity, accounting is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual reviewed 8 schools in Utah to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of accounting. Combined, these schools handed out 869 master's degrees in accounting to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Master's Degree
The accounting master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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 accounting students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of accounting students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 much debt accounting students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized accounting related body.
Our complete 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 Utah.
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Every student who is interested in a master's degree in accounting has to check out University of Utah. U of U is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Salt Lake City.
Students who graduate with their master's from the accounting program state that they receive average early career wages of $66,110.
It is hard to beat Western Governors University if you want to pursue a master's degree in accounting. WGU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Salt Lake City.
Those accounting students who get their master's degree from Western Governors University receive $5,443 more than the average accounting grad.
Utah State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in accounting. Located in the small city of Logan, USU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the accounting program make about $64,571 for their early career.
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).