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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 16 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Bachelor's Degree Schools in Missouri ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 737 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 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
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 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.
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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in Missouri.
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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It is difficult to beat University of Central Missouri if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. UCM is a fairly large public university located in the town of Warrensburg.
After graduation, criminal justice bachelor's recipients typically make around $37,221 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections has to look into Saint Louis University. SLU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Saint Louis.
Criminal Justice & Corrections bachelor's degree recipients from Saint Louis University earn a boost of approximately $7,408 over the average earnings of criminal justice & corrections graduates.
Columbia College is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Columbia College Missouri is a medium-sized private not-for-profit college located in the city of Columbia.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their bachelor's degree from Columbia College earn $7,894 more than the typical criminal justice grad.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in criminal justice & corrections has to take a look at Missouri Southern State University. Located in the city of Joplin, Missouri Southern is a public university with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the criminal justice program report average early career wages of $33,167.
Located in the suburb of Parkville, Park University is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the criminal justice & corrections program at Park University earn $11,004 more than the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
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.