If you plan on getting your master's degree in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #14 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 155 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 11,331 master's degrees in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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
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 host 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 master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master'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 many resources a school devotes to homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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 homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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, law enforcement & firefighting related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Schools
The homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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 Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Master's Degree Schools.
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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting in the United States
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
25 Top Schools for a Master's in Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting
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Honorable Mentions
Here are some additional great schools for Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting students that almost earned our Best Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Master's Degree Schools award.
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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).