If you pursue a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #21 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 26 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for general business/commerce students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 2,921 bachelor's degrees in general business/commerce to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Business/Commerce School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of general business/commerce for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality general business 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
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 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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to general business/commerce students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general business/commerce students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 general business/commerce students go into to obtain their bachelor'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 general business/commerce related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general business/commerce students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank General Business/Commerce Schools
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best General Business/Commerce Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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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Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce has to check out University of Missouri - Columbia. Mizzou is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Columbia.
Bachelor's recipients from the general business/commerce program at University of Missouri - Columbia get $6,709 more than the typical graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce needs to take a look at University of Kansas. KU is a very large public university located in the city of Lawrence.
After graduating, general business bachelor's recipients generally earn around $49,339 at the beginning of their careers.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce needs to look into University of Missouri - St Louis. UMSL is a fairly large public university located in the large suburb of Saint Louis.
After graduation, general business bachelor's recipients typically earn around $48,928 in the first five years of their career.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce needs to look into Lindenwood University. Lindenwood University is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Saint Charles.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the general business program state that they receive average early career wages of $47,821.
Bellevue University is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Bellevue.
Bachelor's recipients from the general business/commerce major at Bellevue University get $8,838 more than the standard college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the town of Waverly, Wartburg is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Those general business/commerce students who get their bachelor's degree from Wartburg College receive $5,362 more than the standard general business student.
K -State is a fairly large public university located in the city of Manhattan.
General Business/Commerce bachelor's degree recipients from Kansas State University receive an earnings boost of around $4,933 over the average earnings of general business/commerce majors.
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).