General Education is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #12 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 20 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best General Education Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,282 master's degrees in general education to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Education School for Your Master's Degree
The education 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
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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to general education students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general education students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 easy is it for general education 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 general education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general education 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 General Education Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Purdue University - Main Campus is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in general education. Purdue is a fairly large public university located in the small city of West Lafayette.
Those general education students who get their master's degree from Purdue University - Main Campus earn $5,815 more than the standard education grad.
It is hard to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a master's degree in general education. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a very large student population.
General Education master's degree recipients from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign receive an earnings boost of approximately $7,640 above the average earnings of general education majors.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in general education has to take a look at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. U-M is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Ann Arbor.
After graduation, education master's recipients usually earn about $52,160 in their early careers.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in general education needs to take a look at Ohio State University - Main Campus. Ohio State is a very large public university located in the large city of Columbus.
After graduating, education master's recipients typically make about $48,780 in their early careers.
UM Flint is a medium-sized public university located in the city of Flint.
Master's recipients from the general education degree program at University of Michigan - Flint get $2,023 above the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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 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:
