If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in ethnic studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #73 in the country in terms of popularity. 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 3 schools in Minnesota to determine which ones were the best for ethnic studies students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 115 bachelor's degrees in ethnic studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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 Ethnic Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The ethnic studies bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality ethnic 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 ethnic studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other ethnic 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 ethnic 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 ethnic studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for ethnic studies students working on their bachelor's degree.
The ethnic studies 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 Ethnic Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Minnesota.
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//ethnic-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.
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in ethnic studies. Located in the large city of Minneapolis, UMN Twin Cities is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the ethnic studies program make an average of $33,000 for their early career.
It is difficult to beat St Olaf College if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in ethnic studies. St. Olaf is a small private not-for-profit college located in the distant town of Northfield.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the ethnic studies program earn about $28,288 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 ethnic studies bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality ethnic studies program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
