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 4 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for journalism students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 161 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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for journalism 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 Journalism Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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University of Iowa is a wonderful decision for students interested in a master's degree in journalism. Iowa is a fairly large public university located in the city of Iowa City.
Journalism master's degree recipients from University of Iowa get an earnings boost of approximately $10,380 above the average earnings of journalism majors.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in journalism needs to take a look at University of Nebraska - Lincoln. UNL is a very large public university located in the city of Lincoln.
Students who graduate with their master's from the journalism program state that they receive average early career wages of $61,760.
University of Kansas is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in journalism. KU is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Lawrence.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the journalism program make about $66,011 in their early career salary.
It is difficult to beat University of Missouri - Columbia if you wish to pursue a master's degree in journalism. Mizzou is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Columbia.
Students who graduate with their master's from the journalism program report average early career earnings of $55,800.
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.
