If you plan on getting your master's degree in communication & media studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #44 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 8 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Communication & Media Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 232 master's degrees in communication & media studies to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of communication & media studies 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 communication & media studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of communication & media studies 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 much debt communication & media studies 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 communication & media studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for communication & media studies 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 Communication & Media Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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It's hard to beat Drake University if you want to pursue a master's degree in communication & media studies. Drake is a small private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Des Moines.
Master's recipients from the communication & media studies degree program at Drake University get $2,468 above the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
Missouri State University - Springfield is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in communication & media studies. Missouri State is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Springfield.
After graduation, communications master's recipients usually make an average of $45,092 in the first five years of their career.
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 communication & media studies 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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