Ranked #15 in popularity, economics is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Economics Bachelor's Degree Schools in Rhode Island ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 313 bachelor's degrees in economics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Economics School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of economics for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality economics program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 economics students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other economics 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 economics 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 economics related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for economics students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Economics Bachelor's Degree Schools in Rhode Island list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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It is hard to beat Brown University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in economics. Brown is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Providence.
Those economics students who get their bachelor's degree from Brown University earn $12,841 more than the standard economics student.
It's difficult to beat Providence College if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in economics. Providence is a small private not-for-profit college located in the city of Providence.
Economics bachelor's degree recipients from Providence College get an earnings boost of about $10,141 above the typical earnings of economics graduates.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in economics needs to look into University of Rhode Island. URI is a fairly large public university located in the suburb of Kingston.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the economics program state that they receive average early career income of $43,444.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in economics needs to take a look at Bryant University. Located in the suburb of Smithfield, Bryant is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Soon after graduating, economics bachelor's recipients generally earn around $52,020 in their early careers.
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).
Your choice of economics for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality economics program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
