If you pursue a bachelor's degree in accounting, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #8 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 15 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Accounting Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 527 bachelor's degrees in accounting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The accounting bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality accounting program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 bachelor'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 bachelor's degree.
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 bachelor'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 Accounting Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
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It's hard to beat Iowa State University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in accounting. Iowa State is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Ames.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the accounting program earn an average of $58,479 for their early career.
It is difficult to beat University of Iowa if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in accounting. Located in the city of Iowa City, Iowa is a public university with a very large student population.
Those accounting students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Iowa receive $6,677 more than the typical accounting student.
Drake University is a good choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in accounting. Drake is a small private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Des Moines.
Those accounting students who get their bachelor's degree from Drake University receive $7,226 more than the average accounting graduate.
Luther College is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in accounting. Located in the town of Decorah, Luther is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the accounting program earn about $60,068 in their early career salary.
Loras is a small private not-for-profit college located in the small city of Dubuque.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at Loras College get $2,451 above the standard college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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).