a bachelor's degree in criminology is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #53 out of 363 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 8 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for criminology students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 614 bachelor's degrees in criminology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Criminology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The criminology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality criminology program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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 bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor'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 - The number of criminology students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 criminology to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
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 schools 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 Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
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It is difficult to beat Northern Arizona University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in criminology. Located in the small city of Flagstaff, NAU is a public university with a very large student population.
Criminology bachelor's degree recipients from Northern Arizona University get an earnings boost of around $2,248 over the average income of criminology graduates.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in criminology needs to take a look at The University of Texas at Dallas. Located in the midsize city of Richardson, UT Dallas is a public university with a very large student population.
Those criminology students who get their bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Dallas make $5,637 more than the standard criminology grad.
University of Houston - Clear Lake is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in criminology. UH Clear Lake is a moderately-sized public university located in the medium-sized city of Houston.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the criminology program state that they receive average early career wages of $35,673.
Texas A&M University - Kingsville is a wonderful choice for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in criminology. Located in the distant town of Kingsville, Texas A&M Kingsville is a public university with a medium-sized student population.
After graduating, criminology bachelor's recipients usually earn about $30,490 in the first five 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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
The criminology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality criminology program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
