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 10 schools in the Far Western US 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 852 master's degrees in human resource management during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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University of Southern California is a good choice for students pursuing a master's degree in human resource management. USC is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Los Angeles.
Those human resource management students who get their master's degree from University of Southern California earn $23,912 more than the typical hr graduate.
Pepperdine University is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a master's degree in human resource management. Located in the suburb of Malibu, Pepperdine is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Those human resource management students who get their master's degree from Pepperdine University receive $42,989 more than the typical hr student.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in human resource management has to check out University of San Francisco. USFCA is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the city of San Francisco.
Master's recipients from the human resource management major at University of San Francisco get $57,002 above the typical graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Golden Gate University - San Francisco is a good choice for students interested in a master's degree in human resource management. Located in the city of San Francisco, Golden Gate University - San Francisco is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Master's recipients from the human resource management degree program at Golden Gate University - San Francisco earn $4,478 more than the typical college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Located in the city of San Diego, National University is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the human resource management program at National University earn $3,135 more than the typical college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Brandman is a moderately-sized public university located in the large city of Irvine.
Human Resource Management master's degree recipients from Brandman University earn a boost of around $4,965 over the average income 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:
