If you pursue a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #7 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in Washington to determine which ones were the best for criminal justice & corrections students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 276 bachelor's degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Criminal Justice & Corrections School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of criminal justice & corrections for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality criminal justice program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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.
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 bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 criminal justice & corrections students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of criminal justice & corrections 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 criminal justice & corrections 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 criminal justice & corrections related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for criminal justice & corrections 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 Criminal Justice & Corrections Bachelor's Degree Schools in Washington list to help you make the college decision.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
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Central Washington University is a good option for students interested in a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the distant town of Ellensburg, CWU is a public university with a medium-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the criminal justice program state that they receive average early career income of $44,172.
Seattle University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Seattle U is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the city of Seattle.
Criminal Justice & Corrections bachelor's degree recipients from Seattle University receive an earnings boost of about $7,574 over the average income of criminal justice & corrections graduates.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of criminal justice & corrections for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality criminal justice program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
