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 7 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Special Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in Missouri ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 146 bachelor's degrees in special education to qualified students.
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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 take this into account we consider 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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools 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 Missouri ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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.
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Missouri State University - Springfield is a great decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in special education. Missouri State is a fairly large public university located in the city of Springfield.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the special ed program earn around $38,250 in their early career salary.
University of Missouri - Columbia is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in special education. Located in the city of Columbia, Mizzou is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, special ed bachelor's recipients typically make about $37,547 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in special education has to take a look at Northwest Missouri State University. Northwest is a moderately-sized public university located in the remote town of Maryville.
Soon after graduating, special ed bachelor's recipients usually make an average of $38,040 at the beginning of their careers.
Southeast Missouri State University is a great decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in special education. Southeast Missouri State University is a moderately-sized public university located in the city of Cape Girardeau.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the special ed program earn an average of $37,450 in their early career salary.
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 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:
