a master's degree in criminology is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #130 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminology Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 93 master's degrees in criminology to qualified students.
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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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 criminology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminology 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 much debt criminology students go into to obtain their master'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 criminology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for criminology 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 Criminology Master's Degree Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
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Gain the management, leadership, data analysis and budgeting skills you need to advance in the criminal justice field with this online master's from Southern New Hampshire University.
University of California - Irvine is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in criminology. UC Irvine is a very large public university located in the large city of Irvine.
Students who graduate with their master's from the criminology program state that they receive average early career income of $61,062.
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.
