Ranked #9 in popularity, health & physical education is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 20 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for health & physical education students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,324 bachelor's degrees in health & physical education to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Health & Physical Education School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of health & physical education for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality phys ed 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 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 bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor'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 health & physical education students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of health & physical education students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 health & physical education students go into to obtain their bachelor'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 health & physical education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for health & physical education students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Health & Physical Education Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Health & Physical Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a good decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the phys ed program make about $31,187 in their early career salary.
It's difficult to beat Concordia University, Chicago if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Concordia University, Chicago is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of River Forest.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the phys ed program state that they receive average early career income of $29,231.
University of Illinois at Chicago is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. UIC is a very large public university located in the city of Chicago.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the phys ed program make an average of $28,874 in their early career salary.
North Central College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Located in the medium-sized city of Naperville, North Central is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Those health & physical education students who get their bachelor's degree from North Central College earn $3,809 more than the average phys ed graduate.
EIU is a moderately-sized public university located in the remote town of Charleston.
Bachelor's recipients from the health & physical education program at Eastern Illinois University make $3,711 above the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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.