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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 7 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 405 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
The communications bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality communications 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 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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to communication & media studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of communication & media studies students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 easy is it for communication & media studies to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
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.
More Ways to Rank Communication & Media Studies Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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 Iowa is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Iowa is a very large public university located in the city of Iowa City.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the communications program state that they receive average early career earnings of $37,647.
Iowa State University is a wonderful choice for students interested in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Located in the city of Ames, Iowa State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the communications program earn around $40,497 in their early career salary.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies has to check out University of Northern Iowa. Located in the city of Cedar Falls, UNI is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Soon after graduating, communications bachelor's recipients usually make an average of $40,558 in their early careers.
Luther College is a great option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Luther is a small private not-for-profit college located in the remote town of Decorah.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Luther College receive $2,380 more than the typical communications grad.
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).