Ranked #8 in popularity, special education is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 13 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Special Education Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 553 master's degrees in special education during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Special Education School for Your Master's Degree
The special ed master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality special ed program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 combination of different 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 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
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 special education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other special education students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 special 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 special education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for special 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 Special Education Master's Degree Schools in Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
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It's difficult to beat Illinois State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in special education. Illinois State is a very large public university located in the midsize suburb of Normal.
Students who graduate with their master's from the special ed program report average early career wages of $56,893.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in special education has to check out Concordia University, Chicago. 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 special education degree program at Concordia University, Chicago earn $3,300 above the typical college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a wonderful decision for students interested in a master's degree in special education. UIUC is a very large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the special ed program make about $62,249 for their early career.
National Louis University is a wonderful option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in special education. NLU is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Chicago.
Students who graduate with their master's from the special ed program state that they receive average early career earnings of $57,644.
DePaul is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Master's recipients from the special education program at DePaul University make $6,188 above the average college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of Chicago, UIC is a public university with a very large student population.
Those special education students who get their master's degree from University of Illinois at Chicago make $11,949 more than the standard special ed graduate.
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 special ed master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality special ed program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
