a doctor's degree in criminal justice & corrections is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #83 out of 306 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 101 doctor's degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Criminal Justice & Corrections School for Your Doctor's Degree
The criminal justice doctor'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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 doctor'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 doctor'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 colleges for criminal justice & corrections students working on their doctor'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 Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Nova Southeastern University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the large suburb of Fort Lauderdale, NUS Florida is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
After graduation, criminal justice doctorate recipients typically make about $90,969 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.