If you pursue a bachelor's degree in health & physical education, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #9 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 13 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Health & Physical Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,350 bachelor's degrees in health & physical education to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Exercise & Sports Science (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Exercise & Sports Science (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA in Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Exercise Science (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Exercise Science (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 5
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 1 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 1
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 0 offers with relevance >= 1.0
DEBUG: Backfilling with 0 offers with relevance >= 0.9
DEBUG: Backfilling with 1 offers with relevance >= 0.8
Choosing a Great Health & Physical Education School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The phys ed bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 - How many other health & physical education students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 bachelor'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 colleges for health & physical education students working on their bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "parks-recreation-fitness//health-and-physical-education"
University of Iowa is a wonderful choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Located in the small city of Iowa City, Iowa is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, phys ed bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $31,998 in the first five years of their career.
Iowa State University is a good choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Iowa State is a very large public university located in the city of Ames.
Bachelor's recipients from the health & physical education major at Iowa State University make $3,309 more than the standard graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Saint Ambrose University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. St. Ambrose University is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Davenport.
Soon after graduation, phys ed bachelor's recipients usually make an average of $26,608 in their early careers.
University of Northern Iowa is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. UNI is a medium-sized public university located in the small city of Cedar Falls.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the phys ed program state that they receive average early career earnings of $32,709.
Located in the medium-sized city of Des Moines, Grand View University is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Those health & physical education students who get their bachelor's degree from Grand View University make $3,312 more than the average phys ed graduate.
UD is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Dubuque.
Bachelor's recipients from the health & physical education degree program at University of Dubuque get $4,345 more than the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the fringe town of Indianola, Simpson College is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the health & physical education degree program at Simpson College earn $4,975 above the average college grad in this field 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.