If you plan on getting your master's degree in criminology, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #130 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminology Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 91 master's degrees in criminology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 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 schools for criminology students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Criminology Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in criminology has to take a look at Bowling Green State University - Main Campus. BGSU is a large public university located in the town of Bowling Green.
Those criminology students who get their master's degree from Bowling Green State University - Main Campus make $4,164 more than the typical criminology student.
Indiana State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in criminology. Indiana State is a moderately-sized public university located in the small city of Terre Haute.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the criminology program earn around $48,633 in the first couple years of their career.
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.
