Information Science is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #33 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 11 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Information Science Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 2,051 master's degrees in information science to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Information Science School for Your Master's Degree
The is 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. 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different 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 information science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other information science students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 easy is it for information science 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 information science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for information science 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 Information Science Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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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.
It is hard to beat Northwestern University if you want to pursue a master's degree in information science. Located in the small city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the information science degree program at Northwestern University get $48,129 above the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in information science has to take a look at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Located in the midsize city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the is program earn an average of $73,887 in their early career salary.
It is difficult to beat DePaul University if you want to pursue a master's degree in information science. DePaul is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Chicago.
Master's recipients from the information science program at DePaul University earn $7,986 above the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of Dearborn, UM Dearborn is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Those information science students who get their master's degree from University of Michigan - Dearborn earn $18,950 more than the standard is student.
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 is 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
