General Business/Commerce is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #21 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 41 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best General Business/Commerce Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 4,945 bachelor's degrees in general business/commerce during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Business/Commerce School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The general business bachelor'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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor'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 include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 general business/commerce students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general business/commerce 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 general business/commerce 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 general business/commerce related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general business/commerce students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best General Business/Commerce Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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Indiana University - Bloomington is a wonderful choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce. Located in the city of Bloomington, IU Bloomington is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the general business/commerce degree program at Indiana University - Bloomington get $22,259 more than the average college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
University of Notre Dame is a great option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce. Notre Dame is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Notre Dame.
General Business/Commerce bachelor's degree recipients from University of Notre Dame receive an earnings boost of approximately $24,329 over the average earnings of general business/commerce majors.
Indiana University - Purdue University - Indianapolis is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce. IUPUI is a fairly large public university located in the city of Indianapolis.
Those general business/commerce students who get their bachelor's degree from Indiana University - Purdue University - Indianapolis earn $3,626 more than the average general business student.
It's hard to beat Ball State University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in general business/commerce. Located in the city of Muncie, Ball State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the general business program make about $46,550 in their early career salary.
Located in the large suburb of Rochester Hills, Oakland is a public university with a large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the general business/commerce degree program at Oakland University get $7,277 more than the typical 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).
The general business bachelor'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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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