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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 18 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for journalism students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,297 bachelor's degrees in journalism to qualified students.
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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 consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 complete 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 Southwest 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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Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in journalism needs to look into The University of Texas at Austin. UT Austin is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Bachelor's recipients from the journalism program at The University of Texas at Austin get $5,508 more than the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Arizona State University - Tempe is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in journalism. Located in the medium-sized city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Journalism bachelor's degree recipients from Arizona State University - Tempe get an earnings boost of around $8,777 over the average earnings of journalism graduates.
It's hard to beat University of North Texas if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in journalism. UNT is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Denton.
Bachelor's recipients from the journalism major at University of North Texas get $4,290 more than the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in journalism has to look into University of Oklahoma Norman Campus. University of Oklahoma is a very large public university located in the midsize suburb of Norman.
Those journalism students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Oklahoma Norman Campus receive $2,916 more than the standard journalism graduate.
University of Arizona is a very large public university located in the city of Tucson.
Journalism bachelor's degree recipients from University of Arizona get an earnings boost of around $2,693 above the average earnings of journalism majors.
SMU is a large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Dallas.
Bachelor's recipients from the journalism degree program at Southern Methodist University make $6,674 above the average graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
UH is a very large public university located in the large city of Houston.
Bachelor's recipients from the journalism degree program at University of Houston make $2,398 more than the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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).