a bachelor's degree in special education is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #55 out of 363 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 6 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Special Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in South Carolina ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 117 bachelor's degrees in special education during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Special Education (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Special Education (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Special Education (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Special Education (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Special Education (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Special Education (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Grad Cert - Special Education (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Grad Cert - Special Education (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Special Education (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Special Education (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Special Education (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Special Education (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 >= 0.8
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 Special Education School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The special ed bachelor'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. 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 bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor'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 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 full 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.
The special ed school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Special Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in South Carolina.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "education//special-education"
College of Charleston is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in special education. C of C is a fairly large public college located in the city of Charleston.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the special ed program report average early career wages of $39,832.
Winthrop University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in special education. Winthrop is a small public university located in the city of Rock Hill.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the special ed program earn an average of $40,435 in the first couple years of working.
Coastal Carolina University is a good choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in special education. Coastal Carolina University is a large public university located in the small city of Conway.
Soon after graduation, special ed bachelor's recipients typically make around $42,147 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).