If you pursue a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #30 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Master's Degree Schools in Michigan ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 71 master's degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Criminal Justice & Corrections School for Your Master's Degree
The criminal justice 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree 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.
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 much a school focuses on criminal justice & corrections students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminal justice & corrections 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 criminal justice & corrections 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 criminal justice & corrections related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for criminal justice & corrections students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Criminal Justice & Corrections Schools
The criminal justice 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 Criminal Justice & Corrections Master's Degree Schools in Michigan.
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It is difficult to beat Michigan State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Michigan State is a very large public university located in the small city of East Lansing.
Criminal Justice & Corrections master's degree recipients from Michigan State University receive an earnings boost of approximately $14,821 above the average earnings of criminal justice & corrections majors.
It's hard to beat Ferris State University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Ferris is a medium-sized public university located in the town of Big Rapids.
After graduating, criminal justice master's recipients typically earn around $51,699 in the first five years of their career.
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 criminal justice 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
