Human Development & Family Studies is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #97 most popular master'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 8 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for human development & family studies students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 247 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
The human development master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality human development 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 for a Master's Degree 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 master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master'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 many resources a school devotes to human development & family studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other human development & family studies students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 human development & family studies to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
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 schools for human development & family studies students working on their master'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 Human Development & Family Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Oklahoma State University - Main Campus is a great decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in human development & family studies. OSU is a fairly large public university located in the distant town of Stillwater.
After graduating, human development master's recipients generally earn an average of $45,321 in the first five years of their career.
Texas Woman's University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in human development & family studies. Located in the midsize city of Denton, TWU is a public university with a large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the human development program state that they receive average early career wages of $43,090.
Arizona State University - Tempe is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in human development & family studies. ASU - Tempe is a very large public university located in the city of Tempe.
Human Development & Family Studies master's degree recipients from Arizona State University - Tempe earn a boost of about $2,507 over the average income of human development & family studies majors.
Located in the midsize city of Scottsdale, ASU - Skysong is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the human development & family studies major at Arizona State University - Skysong make $2,507 above the standard college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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 human development master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality human development program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
