You'll be studying one of the lesser sought-after majors if you pursue a Master's Degree in natural resources & conservation. It is ranked #23 out of 37 major degree programs in terms of popularity. As such, your educational options may be more limited than if you were in a more popular field.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Natural Resources & Conservation Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 488 master's degrees in natural resources & conservation to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Natural Resources & Conservation School for Your Master's Degree
The natural resources & conservation master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality natural resources & conservation program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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.
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 natural resources & conservation students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of natural resources & conservation 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 natural resources & conservation 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 natural resources & conservation related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for natural resources & conservation 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 Natural Resources & Conservation Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
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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).
The natural resources & conservation master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality natural resources & conservation program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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