Ranked #7 in popularity, criminal justice & corrections is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 7 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 357 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
The criminal justice bachelor'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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor'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 include a school's overall Best Colleges 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 Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor'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 bachelor'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 bachelor'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 bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Criminal Justice & Corrections Schools
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 Iowa list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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Iowa State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Iowa State is a very large public university located in the city of Ames.
Soon after graduating, criminal justice bachelor's recipients typically earn around $41,624 at the beginning of their careers.
Simpson College is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the fringe town of Indianola, Simpson College is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
After graduating, criminal justice bachelor's recipients usually earn about $42,862 in their early careers.
It is hard to beat Waldorf University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Waldorf is a small private for-profit university located in the remote area of Forest City.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminal justice program earn about $42,735 in the first couple years of their career.
It's difficult to beat University of Dubuque if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. UD is a small private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Dubuque.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Dubuque earn $4,254 more than the typical criminal justice student.
Located in the city of Des Moines, Grand View University is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Criminal Justice & Corrections bachelor's degree recipients from Grand View University earn a boost of about $3,122 above the typical income of criminal justice & corrections majors.
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
The criminal justice bachelor'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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
