If you're seeking a Master's Degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies, you will have fewer peers than average since the major degree program is the #211 one in the country in terms of popularity.While this may limit the number of schools that offer the degree program, there are still top-quality ones to be found.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 6 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Master's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 174 master's degrees in parks, recreation & leisure studies to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies School for Your Master's Degree
The parks & rec master'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 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 college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master'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 many resources a school devotes to parks, recreation & leisure studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other parks, recreation & leisure studies students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 much debt parks, recreation & leisure studies 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 parks, recreation & leisure studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for parks, recreation & leisure studies students working on their master's degree.
The parks & rec school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Master's Degree Schools.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies needs to take a look at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies master's degree recipients from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign earn a boost of around $3,369 over the typical income of parks, recreation & leisure studies majors.
It's hard to beat Indiana University - Bloomington if you wish to pursue a master's degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies. Located in the city of Bloomington, IU Bloomington is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the parks & rec program make around $42,647 in their early career salary.
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.
The parks & rec master'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:
