Homeland Security is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #64 most popular master's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for homeland security students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 24 master's degrees in homeland security to qualified students.
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Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on homeland security students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other homeland security students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 easy is it for homeland security 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 homeland security related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for homeland security students working on their master's degree.
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 Homeland Security Master's Degree Schools in Virginia list to help you make the college decision.
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George Mason University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in homeland security. GMU is a fairly large public university located in the large suburb of Fairfax.
Students who graduate with their master's from the homeland security program state that they receive average early career wages of $138,835.
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.
