a master's degree in human development & family studies is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #97 out of 343 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 6 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Human Development & Family Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 443 master's degrees in human development & family studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Human Development & Family Studies School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of human development & family studies for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 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 school'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 Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master'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 human development & family studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of human development & family studies students who choose to seek a master'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 human development & family studies 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 human development & family studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for human development & family studies students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Human Development & Family Studies Schools
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Human Development & Family Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in human development & family studies needs to look into University of Florida. UF is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Gainesville.
Human Development & Family Studies master's degree recipients from University of Florida get an earnings boost of about $2,784 over the average income of human development & family studies majors.
It is hard to beat The University of Tennessee - Knoxville if you wish to pursue a master's degree in human development & family studies. UT Knoxville is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Knoxville.
Master's students who receive their degree from the human development program make about $47,522 in the first couple years of working.
Human Development & Family Studies Related Rankings by Major
One of 8 majors within the Family, Consumer & Human Sciences area of study, Human Development & Family Studies has other similar majors worth exploring.
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).