Ranked #28 in popularity, public health is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 27 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for public health students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,176 bachelor's degrees in public health during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Public Health School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The public health bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public health program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to public health students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public health 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 public health 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 public health related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public health students working on their bachelor's degree.
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 Public Health Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
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University of Arizona is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in public health. University of Arizona is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Tucson.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the public health program state that they receive average early career wages of $40,005.
Texas A&M University - College Station is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in public health. Texas A&M College Station is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of College Station.
Soon after graduation, public health bachelor's recipients usually make about $39,584 in their early careers.
It is difficult to beat The University of Texas at Austin if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public health. UT Austin is a very large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the public health program state that they receive average early career wages of $35,761.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in public health. Located in the city of Houston, MD Anderson is a public university with a fairly small student population.
Public Health bachelor's degree recipients from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center receive an earnings boost of approximately $60,438 above the typical income of public health majors.
NAU is a very large public university located in the small city of Flagstaff.
Public Health bachelor's degree recipients from Northern Arizona University receive an earnings boost of around $2,328 over the typical earnings of public health majors.
Located in the large suburb of Edmond, UCO is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the public health degree program at University of Central Oklahoma make $10,327 above the typical graduate in this field 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 public health bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public health program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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