If you pursue a doctor's degree in educational administration, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #6 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 11 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Educational Administration Doctor's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,036 doctor's degrees in educational administration to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Educational Administration School for Your Doctor's Degree
The education admin doctor'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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor'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 doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor'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 educational administration students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of educational administration students who choose to seek a doctor'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 educational administration students go into to obtain their doctor'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 educational administration related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for educational administration students working on their doctor's degree.
The education admin 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 Educational Administration Doctor's Degree Schools in California.
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San Diego State University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in educational administration. Located in the large city of San Diego, SDSU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those educational administration students who get their doctor's degree from San Diego State University receive $28,534 more than the standard education admin grad.
California State University - Fullerton is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in educational administration. Cal State Fullerton is a very large public university located in the suburb of Fullerton.
Those educational administration students who get their doctor's degree from California State University - Fullerton receive $13,683 more than the average education admin grad.
Located in the city of Fresno, Fresno State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those educational administration students who get their doctor's degree from California State University - Fresno make $2,133 more than the standard education admin grad.
CSUSB is a large public university located in the midsize city of San Bernardino.
Educational Administration doctor's degree recipients from California State University - San Bernardino get an earnings boost of around $5,902 above the typical income of educational administration majors.
Located in the city of San Francisco, SFSU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Doctorate recipients from the educational administration program at San Francisco State University get $3,359 more than the typical college grad with the same degree 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).
The education admin doctor'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:
