Natural Resource Management is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #127 most popular master's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Natural Resource Management Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 330 master's degrees in natural resource management during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Natural Resource Management School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of natural resource management for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality resource management 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 many resources a school devotes to natural resource management students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of natural resource management 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 much debt natural resource management 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 natural resource management related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for natural resource management 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 Natural Resource Management Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Learn to fit environmental standards into your business practices when you earn your sustainability and environmental compliance MBA at Southern New Hampshire University.
University of Denver is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in natural resource management. Located in the large city of Denver, DU is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Natural Resource Management master's degree recipients from University of Denver get an earnings boost of about $11,456 over the average earnings of natural resource management majors.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in natural resource management needs to look into Colorado State University - Fort Collins. Colorado State is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Fort Collins.
Master's students who receive their degree from the resource management program make about $43,262 in the first couple years of their career.
University of Idaho is a good choice for students pursuing a master's degree in natural resource management. U of I is a fairly large public university located in the distant town of Moscow.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the resource management program make an average of $49,865 in the first couple years of their career.
Montana State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in natural resource management. Located in the small city of Bozeman, MSU Bozeman is a public university with a large student population.
Master's recipients from the natural resource management program at Montana State University earn $4,082 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
Your choice of natural resource management for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality resource management program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
