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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Bachelor's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 825 bachelor's degrees in criminal justice & corrections during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 complete 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.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Bachelor's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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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Bethel University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Bethel is a small private not-for-profit university located in the distant town of McKenzie.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their bachelor's degree from Bethel University earn $16,347 more than the typical criminal justice graduate.
The University of Tennessee - Chattanooga is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the city of Chattanooga, UT Chattanooga is a public university with a large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminal justice program earn about $37,403 in their early career salary.
Middle Tennessee State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Middle Tennessee State University is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Murfreesboro.
Soon after graduation, criminal justice bachelor's recipients usually make about $37,952 in the first five years of their career.
University of Memphis is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. UofM is a very large public university located in the city of Memphis.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminal justice program earn an average of $35,900 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.
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:
