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 reviewed 5 schools in the Rocky Mountains Region to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of information science. Combined, these schools handed out 422 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 colleges 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 Rocky Mountains 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.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in information science has to take a look at University of Utah. U of U is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Salt Lake City.
Master's recipients from the information science program at University of Utah get $3,473 above the typical graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in information science has to look into Colorado State University - Fort Collins. Colorado State is a fairly large public university located in the city of Fort Collins.
Master's recipients from the information science degree program at Colorado State University - Fort Collins make $7,369 more than the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the large city of Denver, CU Anschutz is a public university with a very large student population.
Information Science master's degree recipients from University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus earn a boost of around $3,388 over the average income of information science majors.
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).