If you pursue a master's degree in information science, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #33 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 14 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Information Science Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,654 master's degrees in information science to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Information Science School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of information science for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality is 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
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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master'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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to information science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of information science students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 much debt information science 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 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.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Information Science Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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 difficult to beat The University of Texas at Dallas if you want to pursue a master's degree in information science. Located in the midsize city of Richardson, UT Dallas is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the information science program at The University of Texas at Dallas get $8,052 more than the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
It's difficult to beat The University of Texas at Austin if you want to pursue a master's degree in information science. Located in the city of Austin, UT Austin is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the is program report average early career wages of $54,007.
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).