Recreation Administration isn't the most popular master's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #164 in popularity out of 343 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Recreation Administration Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 24 master's degrees in recreation administration during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 recreation administration students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other recreation administration 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 easy is it for recreation administration 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 recreation administration related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for recreation administration 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 Recreation Administration Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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It's hard to beat Western Illinois University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in recreation administration. Located in the remote town of Macomb, WIU is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the recreation admin program make about $39,284 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
by our College Data Analytics Team
