Curriculum & Instruction is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #13 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 30 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for curriculum & instruction students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 2,422 master's degrees in curriculum & instruction to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Curriculum & Instruction School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of curriculum & instruction for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 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 include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different 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 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
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 curriculum & instruction students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of curriculum & instruction 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 curriculum & instruction 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 curriculum & instruction related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for curriculum & instruction students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Curriculum & Instruction Schools
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 Curriculum & Instruction Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in curriculum & instruction needs to take a look at Purdue University - Main Campus. Located in the small city of West Lafayette, Purdue is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduating, curriculum master's recipients generally earn around $57,521 in their early careers.
University of Cincinnati - Main Campus is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in curriculum & instruction. Located in the city of Cincinnati, UC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Curriculum & Instruction master's degree recipients from University of Cincinnati - Main Campus receive an earnings boost of about $4,443 above the typical earnings of curriculum & instruction majors.
Concordia University, Chicago is a good choice for individuals interested in a master's degree in curriculum & instruction. Located in the suburb of River Forest, Concordia University, Chicago is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Master's recipients from the curriculum & instruction major at Concordia University, Chicago earn $9,633 above the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
NLU is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Curriculum & Instruction master's degree recipients from National Louis University earn a boost of about $3,901 over the typical earnings of curriculum & instruction majors.
University of Saint Francis is a small private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Joliet.
Those curriculum & instruction students who get their master's degree from University of St Francis make $8,147 more than the typical curriculum student.
Olivet Nazarene is a small private not-for-profit university located in the small suburb of Bourbonnais.
Master's recipients from the curriculum & instruction program at Olivet Nazarene University get $4,592 more than the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
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).
Your choice of curriculum & instruction for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
