Communication & Media Studies is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #5 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.
College Factual looked at 49 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 4,954 bachelor's degrees in communication & media studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of communication & media studies for getting your bachelor'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 bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host 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 bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor'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 - How many other communication & media studies 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 much debt communication & media studies students go into to obtain their bachelor'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 bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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University of Arizona is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. University of Arizona is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Tucson.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from University of Arizona get an earnings boost of approximately $8,563 over the typical earnings of communication & media studies graduates.
Texas A&M University - College Station is a wonderful choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Texas A&M College Station is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of College Station.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Texas A&M University - College Station earn a boost of approximately $8,865 over the typical earnings of communication & media studies graduates.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies has to look into Arizona State University - Tempe. Located in the medium-sized city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Arizona State University - Tempe earn a boost of about $10,141 above the average income of communication & media studies majors.
The University of Texas at Austin is a good choice for students interested in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. UT Austin is a very large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from The University of Texas at Austin get an earnings boost of approximately $9,418 above the typical income of communication & media studies graduates.
Located in the city of Waco, Baylor is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Baylor University earn $9,310 more than the average communications graduate.
ASU - Skysong is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Scottsdale.
Bachelor's recipients from the communication & media studies degree program at Arizona State University - Skysong get $10,141 above the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
University of Oklahoma is a very large public university located in the midsize suburb of Norman.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Oklahoma Norman Campus make $10,579 more than the standard communications grad.
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Honorable Mentions
Here are some additional great schools for Communication & Media Studies students in the Southwest Region that almost earned our Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region award.
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 bachelor'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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