If you pursue a bachelor's degree in political science & government, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #12 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 42 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Political Science & Government Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 3,709 bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of political science & government for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality political science program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 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
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 - How many other political science & government students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor'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 political science & government 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 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 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 Political Science & Government Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest 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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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.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in political science & government needs to check out Texas A&M University - College Station. Located in the midsize city of College Station, Texas A&M College Station is a public university with a very large student population.
Political Science & Government bachelor's degree recipients from Texas A&M University - College Station get an earnings boost of approximately $6,061 above the typical earnings of political science & government graduates.
The University of Texas at Austin is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in political science & government. Located in the large city of Austin, UT Austin is a public university with a very large student population.
Those political science & government students who get their bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Austin receive $7,525 more than the standard political science grad.
Arizona State University - Tempe is a wonderful choice for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in political science & government. ASU - Tempe is a very large public university located in the city of Tempe.
Those political science & government students who get their bachelor's degree from Arizona State University - Tempe receive $6,725 more than the typical political science student.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in political science & government needs to look into Rice University. Rice is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the city of Houston.
Those political science & government students who get their bachelor's degree from Rice University earn $18,972 more than the typical political science grad.
Located in the city of Fort Worth, TCU is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Political Science & Government bachelor's degree recipients from Texas Christian University get an earnings boost of around $14,871 above the typical earnings of political science & government graduates.
Located in the large suburb of Dallas, SMU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the political science & government major at Southern Methodist University earn $16,404 more than the standard graduate in this field 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).