Dispute Resolution isn't the most popular master's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #185 in popularity out of 343 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for dispute resolution students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 183 master's degrees in dispute resolution during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 dispute resolution students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other dispute resolution 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 dispute resolution 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 dispute resolution related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for dispute resolution 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 Dispute Resolution Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in dispute resolution needs to take a look at University of Southern California. USC is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Los Angeles.
Dispute Resolution master's degree recipients from University of Southern California receive an earnings boost of approximately $4,396 over the average income of dispute resolution majors.
It is hard to beat Pepperdine University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in dispute resolution. Located in the suburb of Malibu, Pepperdine is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the dispute resolution program state that they receive average early career earnings of $64,096.
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.
