Journalism is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #46 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 26 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Journalism Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,414 bachelor's degrees in journalism during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Journalism School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of journalism for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality journalism 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
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 account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges 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 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 many resources a school devotes to journalism students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other journalism 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 journalism 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 journalism related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for journalism students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Journalism Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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 Southern California is a wonderful choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in journalism. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Journalism bachelor's degree recipients from University of Southern California earn a boost of around $9,526 above the average income of journalism graduates.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in journalism needs to look into University of Oregon. Located in the medium-sized city of Eugene, UO is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduation, journalism bachelor's recipients usually earn an average of $33,525 at the beginning of their careers.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in journalism needs to look into Loyola Marymount University. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a bachelor’s in journalism from Loyola Marymount University
University of Washington - Seattle Campus is a great choice for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in journalism. UW Seattle is a fairly large public university located in the city of Seattle.
Soon after graduation, journalism bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $33,250 in their early careers.
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).