When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in computer systems networking sits in the middle of the road, ranking #145 out of 343 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
College Factual looked at 12 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Computer Systems Networking Master's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 593 master's degrees in computer systems networking during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great Computer Systems Networking School for Your Master's Degree
The networking master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality networking program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master'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 college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree 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 Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on computer systems networking students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of computer systems networking students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 computer systems networking students go into to obtain their master'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 computer systems networking related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for computer systems networking students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Computer Systems Networking Schools
The networking school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Computer Systems Networking Master's Degree Schools.
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To stay competitive in today's information technology world, employees need to have training that goes beyond traditional computer programming and IT expertise.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The networking master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality networking program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
