Area Studies is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #85 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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 11 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for area studies students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 413 bachelor's degrees in area studies to qualified students.
Explore societal similarities and differences as seen through cultural, biological, archaeological and linguistic lenses when you earn one of your degrees in anthropology from Southern New Hampshire University.
Choosing a Great Area Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The area studies bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality area studies program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on area studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other area studies students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for area studies 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 area studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for area studies 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 Area Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in California 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.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "ethnic-cultural-gender-studies//area-studies"
Explore societal similarities and differences as seen through cultural, biological, archaeological and linguistic lenses when you earn one of your degrees in anthropology from Southern New Hampshire University.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in area studies has to look into University of California - Berkeley. UC Berkeley is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Berkeley.
Those area studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of California - Berkeley make $21,376 more than the standard area studies graduate.
University of California - Los Angeles is a wonderful decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in area studies. Located in the city of Los Angeles, UCLA is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the area studies program earn an average of $23,819 for their early 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).
The area studies bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality area studies program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
