a master's degree in journalism is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #102 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Massachusetts to determine which ones were the best for journalism students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 110 master's degrees in journalism to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Journalism School for Your Master's Degree
The journalism master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on journalism students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other journalism students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 journalism 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 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 master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Journalism Master's Degree Schools in Massachusetts ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in journalism needs to take a look at Boston University. Boston U is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Boston.
Master's recipients from the journalism major at Boston University get $8,204 above the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Emerson College is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in journalism. Located in the city of Boston, Emerson is a private not-for-profit college with a moderately-sized student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the journalism program make about $43,011 in the first couple 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).
The journalism master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
