Special Education is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #55 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Special Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in Rhode Island ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 59 bachelor's degrees in special education during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 - The number of special education students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 much debt special education students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized special education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for special education students working on their bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in Rhode Island ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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Providence College is a great decision for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in special education. Providence is a small private not-for-profit college located in the city of Providence.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the special ed program earn an average of $49,664 in their early career salary.
Salve Regina University is a good choice for students interested in a bachelor's degree in special education. Salve Regina is a small private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Newport.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the special ed program report average early career income of $51,308.
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).
