Ranked #22 in popularity, human resource management is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 10 schools in California 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 844 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
Your choice of human resource management for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree 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.
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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master'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 human resource management students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of human resource management students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 human resource management to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
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 schools for human resource management students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Human Resource Management Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Human Resource Management Master's Degree Schools in California list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in human resource management has to take a look at University of Southern California. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those human resource management students who get their master's degree from University of Southern California receive $19,848 more than the standard hr grad.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in human resource management has to look into Pepperdine University. Pepperdine is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Malibu.
Master's recipients from the human resource management program at Pepperdine University make $38,925 above the average graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
It's hard to beat University of San Francisco if you wish to pursue a master's degree in human resource management. Located in the city of San Francisco, USFCA is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Those human resource management students who get their master's degree from University of San Francisco earn $52,938 more than the typical hr grad.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in human resource management has to look into Golden Gate University - San Francisco. Golden Gate University - San Francisco is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large city of San Francisco.
Students who graduate with their master's from the hr program report average early career earnings of $75,191.
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).
Your choice of human resource management for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
