a master's degree in liberal arts general studies is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #69 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 25 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Liberal Arts General Studies Master's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,693 master's degrees in liberal arts general studies during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great Liberal Arts General Studies School for Your Master's Degree
The liberal arts master'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 master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of various 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 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
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 liberal arts general studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other liberal arts general studies students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 liberal arts general 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 liberal arts general studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for liberal arts general studies students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Liberal Arts General Studies Schools
The liberal arts 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 Liberal Arts General Studies Master's Degree Schools.
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The University of Texas at Austin is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in liberal arts general studies. UT Austin is a very large public university located in the city of Austin.
Master's recipients from the liberal arts general studies major at The University of Texas at Austin get $40,951 more than the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
It is difficult to beat New York University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in liberal arts general studies. NYU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of New York.
Students who graduate with their master's from the liberal arts program report average early career income of $40,856.
University of Oklahoma is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized suburb of Norman.
Master's recipients from the liberal arts general studies program at University of Oklahoma Norman Campus earn $10,923 more than the average college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
SMU is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Dallas.
Master's recipients from the liberal arts general studies degree program at Southern Methodist University get $4,173 more than the average college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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.
The liberal arts master'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.
