If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in human development & family studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #39 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 21 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for human development & family studies students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,328 bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree
The human development bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 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 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 human development & family 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 human development & family studies related body.
Our full 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 bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Human Development & Family Studies Schools
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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region 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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University of Wisconsin - Madison is a good choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in human development & family studies. UW - Madison is a very large public university located in the large city of Madison.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the human development program earn an average of $34,149 in their early career salary.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in human development & family studies has to take a look at Michigan State University. Michigan State is a fairly large public university located in the small city of East Lansing.
Soon after graduating, human development bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $31,434 at the beginning of their careers.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in human development & family studies. Located in the large city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the human development program earn about $34,610 for their early career.
It's hard to beat Purdue University - Main Campus if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in human development & family studies. Located in the small city of West Lafayette, Purdue is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduation, human development bachelor's recipients usually earn around $35,436 in their early careers.
Union is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Cincinnati.
Human Development & Family Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Union Institute & University receive an earnings boost of approximately $4,105 above the average earnings of human development & family studies majors.
Located in the distant town of Athens, OHIO Athens is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the human development & family studies degree program at Ohio University - Athens Campus get $3,681 above the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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).