Instructional Media Design is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #32 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.
College Factual looked at 9 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Instructional Media Design Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 414 master's degrees in instructional media design to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Instructional Media Design School for Your Master's Degree
The instructional media 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. 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 instructional media design students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other instructional media design 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 instructional media design 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 instructional media design related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for instructional media design students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Instructional Media Design Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Learn to assess and integrate technology into your school's curriculum and improve students' learning with this specialized online master's from Southern New Hampshire University.
University of Central Missouri is a great choice for individuals interested in a master's degree in instructional media design. UCM is a large public university located in the distant town of Warrensburg.
Students who graduate with their master's from the instructional media program report average early career wages of $49,628.
FHSU is a large public university located in the remote town of Hays.
Master's recipients from the instructional media design major at Fort Hays State University earn $3,055 more than the average 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).