If you plan on getting your master's degree in sustainability science, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #98 in the country in terms of popularity. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for sustainability science students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 162 master's degrees in sustainability science to qualified students.
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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
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 sustainability science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of sustainability science students who choose to seek a master'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 sustainability science 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 sustainability science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for sustainability science students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Sustainability Science Master's Degree Schools in California list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in sustainability science needs to check out University of California - Berkeley. Located in the midsize city of Berkeley, UC Berkeley is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the sustainability science program earn about $75,703 in the first couple years of working.
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).
