Human Resource Management is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #22 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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 26 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for human resource management students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,723 master's degrees in human resource management during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Resources (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Resources (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Grad Cert - Human Resources (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Grad Cert - Human Resources (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Resource Management (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Resource Management (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA - Human Resource Management (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA - Human Resource Management (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Human Resources Management" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Human Resources Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA in Human Resource Management" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Human Resource Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Human Resource Management" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Human Resource Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Industrial Organizational Psychology (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 7
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 4 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 4
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 4 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Human Resource Management School for Your Master's Degree
The hr master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality hr 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
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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to human resource management students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other human resource management students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 human resource management 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 human resource management related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for human resource management students working on their master's degree.
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 Human Resource Management Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list to help you make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "business-management-marketing-sales//human-resource-management"
Villanova University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in human resource management. Located in the suburb of Villanova, Villanova is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Human Resource Management master's degree recipients from Villanova University receive an earnings boost of about $28,143 above the average income of human resource management graduates.
Cornell University is a wonderful decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in human resource management. Cornell is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Ithaca.
Master's recipients from the human resource management program at Cornell University get $41,906 more than the typical graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in human resource management needs to look into University of Pennsylvania. Located in the city of Philadelphia, UPenn is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Human Resource Management master's degree recipients from University of Pennsylvania receive an earnings boost of around $35,937 over the typical earnings of human resource management majors.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in human resource management needs to check out George Washington University. GWU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Washington.
Master's recipients from the human resource management major at George Washington University get $19,122 more than the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of New York, NYU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the human resource management major at New York University get $16,687 above the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of Washington, Georgetown is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the human resource management major at Georgetown University get $28,055 above the standard college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Located in the large city of Philadelphia, Temple is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the human resource management major at Temple University make $4,752 above the standard college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Seton Hall is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of South Orange.
Human Resource Management master's degree recipients from Seton Hall University earn a boost of around $37,645 above the typical earnings of human resource management graduates.
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 hr master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality hr program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
