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 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Liberal Arts General Studies Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 110 master's degrees in liberal arts general studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Liberal Arts General Studies School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of liberal arts general studies for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality liberal arts 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 much a school focuses on liberal arts general studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of liberal arts general studies students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 liberal arts general 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 liberal arts general studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for liberal arts general studies students working on their master'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 Liberal Arts General Studies Master's Degree Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
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California State University - Northridge is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in liberal arts general studies. Located in the large city of Northridge, CSUN is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the liberal arts program report average early career income of $42,557.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of liberal arts general studies for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality liberal arts program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
