Criminology is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #53 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 19 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminology Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,008 bachelor's degrees in criminology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Criminology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of criminology for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 bachelor'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 consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 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
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 criminology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminology students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor'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 much debt criminology 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 criminology related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for criminology students working on their bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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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Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in criminology needs to take a look at Ohio State University - Main Campus. Located in the city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, criminology bachelor's recipients typically earn about $39,396 in their early careers.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a good choice for students interested in a bachelor's degree in criminology. Located in the distant town of Carbondale, SIUC is a public university with a large student population.
After graduation, criminology bachelor's recipients generally earn around $37,645 in the first five years of their career.
Marquette University is a great option for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in criminology. Marquette is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Milwaukee.
Soon after graduation, criminology bachelor's recipients usually earn an average of $35,650 in the first five years of their career.
Indiana State University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in criminology. Located in the small city of Terre Haute, Indiana State is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminology program earn an average of $39,769 in the first couple years of their career.
Located in the distant town of Whitewater, UW - Whitewater is a public university with a large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the criminology program at University of Wisconsin - Whitewater make $2,047 more than the standard college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
UW - River Falls is a moderately-sized public university located in the town of River Falls.
Bachelor's recipients from the criminology degree program at University of Wisconsin - River Falls get $7,100 above the typical college graduate with the same degree 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.