If you pursue a master's degree in health & physical education, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #23 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 29 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Health & Physical Education Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,112 master's degrees in health & physical education to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Health & Physical Education School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of health & physical education for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 health & physical education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of health & physical education 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 health & physical education 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 health & physical education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for health & physical education 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 Health & Physical Education Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Pursue opportunities in collegiate and professional sport management organizations with the support of this well-established online master's degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Texas A&M University - College Station is a great option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in health & physical education. Texas A&M College Station is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of College Station.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the phys ed program earn an average of $47,672 in their early career salary.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in health & physical education needs to take a look at Baylor University. Located in the city of Waco, Baylor is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduation, phys ed master's recipients usually earn about $43,684 in the first five years of their career.
It is hard to beat Southern Methodist University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in health & physical education. SMU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Dallas.
After graduation, phys ed master's recipients typically make around $36,939 in the first five years of their career.
SNU is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Bethany.
Health & Physical Education master's degree recipients from Southern Nazarene University earn a boost of about $5,767 over the average earnings of health & physical education majors.
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.
Your choice of health & physical education for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
