Political Science & Government is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #71 most popular master's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 15 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Political Science & Government Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 429 master's degrees in political science & government to qualified students.
Gain a solid understanding of American political history, the current political landscape, and the major political parties with this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Choosing a Great Political Science & Government School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of political science & government for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality political science 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
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 for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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 many resources a school devotes to political science & government students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of political science & government students who choose to seek a master'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 political science & government to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized political science & government related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for political science & government students working on their master'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 Political Science & Government Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Gain a solid understanding of American political history, the current political landscape, and the major political parties with this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
It's hard to beat Florida State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in political science & government. Located in the medium-sized city of Tallahassee, Florida State is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the political science program make an average of $46,645 in the first couple years of working.
JMU is a very large public university located in the small city of Harrisonburg.
Political Science & Government master's degree recipients from James Madison University get an earnings boost of approximately $8,394 over the typical income of political science & government majors.
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).