Environmental Engineering is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #133 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for environmental engineering students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 117 master's degrees in environmental engineering to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Environmental Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
The environmental engineering master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of various 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 many resources a school devotes to environmental engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other environmental engineering 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 much debt environmental engineering students go into to obtain their master'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 environmental engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for environmental engineering students working on their master's degree.
The environmental engineering 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 Environmental Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region.
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Arizona State University - Tempe is a great choice for students interested in a master's degree in environmental engineering. Located in the midsize city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the environmental engineering program report average early career earnings of $73,584.
It's difficult to beat Texas Tech University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in environmental engineering. Located in the large city of Lubbock, Texas Tech is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the environmental engineering program report average early career income of $76,829.
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 environmental engineering master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
