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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in Wisconsin to determine which ones were the best for special education students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 153 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 take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host 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.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Special Education Master's Degree Schools in Wisconsin ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Carroll University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in special education. Located in the small city of Waukesha, Carroll U is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.More information about a master’s in special education from Carroll University
University of Wisconsin - Whitewater is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in special education. Located in the town of Whitewater, UW - Whitewater is a public university with a large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the special ed program report average early career wages of $51,881.
University of Wisconsin - Superior is a wonderful choice for students pursuing a master's degree in special education. UW - Superior is a small public university located in the medium-sized suburb of Superior.
Soon after graduation, special ed master's recipients generally earn about $55,057 in the first five years of their career.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
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:
