Ranked #2 in popularity, education is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. 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 33 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Education Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 19,669 master's degrees in education to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Education (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Education (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Education & Teaching Associate Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Education & Teaching Associate Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Education & Teaching Doctorate & EdD Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Education & Teaching Doctorate & EdD Programs (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Education & Teaching Graduate Certificate Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Education & Teaching Graduate Certificate Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Education & Teaching Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Education & Teaching Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Education & Teaching PhD Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Education & Teaching PhD Programs (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 6
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 6 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.5
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 6
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 6 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Education School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of education for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education 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
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 consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master'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 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 education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of education 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 easy is it for 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 education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for education students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Education Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
Grand Canyon University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in education. Grand Canyon University is a fairly large private for-profit university located in the large city of Phoenix.More information about a master’s in education from Grand Canyon University
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).