Manufacturing Engineering is about average in terms of popularity for bachelor's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #203 out of the 363 majors across the country that we analyze each year. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for manufacturing engineering students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 42 bachelor's degrees in manufacturing engineering 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 many resources a school devotes to manufacturing engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of manufacturing engineering 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 easy is it for manufacturing engineering to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized manufacturing engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for manufacturing engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Manufacturing Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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Bradley University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in manufacturing engineering. Bradley is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Peoria.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the manufacturing engineering program report average early career wages of $67,488.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
