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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Special Education Master's Degree Schools in Utah ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 243 master's degrees in special education during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 Utah list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in special education needs to take a look at Western Governors University. Located in the large suburb of Salt Lake City, WGU is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the special ed program report average early career income of $56,488.
It's difficult to beat University of Utah if you wish to pursue a master's degree in special education. Located in the medium-sized city of Salt Lake City, U of U is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those special education students who get their master's degree from University of Utah earn $4,742 more than the average special ed grad.
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).
