Ranked #30 in popularity, criminal justice & corrections is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 19 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for criminal justice & corrections students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,071 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 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 master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Criminal Justice & Corrections Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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It is difficult to beat Arizona State University - Skysong if you wish to pursue a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections. ASU - Skysong is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Scottsdale.
Master's recipients from the criminal justice & corrections program at Arizona State University - Skysong make $13,286 more than the standard college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections has to look into Sam Houston State University. SHSU is a very large public university located in the town of Huntsville.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the criminal justice program make an average of $51,544 for their early career.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections has to take a look at University of Phoenix - Arizona. Located in the city of Phoenix, UOPX - Arizona is a private for-profit university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the criminal justice program state that they receive average early career earnings of $49,871.
Located in the city of Houston, UH Downtown is a public university with a large student population.
Master's recipients from the criminal justice & corrections major at University of Houston - Downtown make $13,146 above the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
UNT is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Denton.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their master's degree from University of North Texas earn $2,885 more than the average criminal justice grad.
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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
