Ranked #19 in popularity, public administration is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual reviewed 6 schools in the Rocky Mountains Region to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of public administration. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 508 master's degrees in public administration during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Public Administration School for Your Master's Degree
The public admin master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master'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 include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on public administration students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public administration students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 public administration students go into to obtain their master'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 public administration related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for public administration 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 Public Administration Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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University of Utah is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in public administration. Located in the city of Salt Lake City, U of U is a public university with a very large student population.
Those public administration students who get their master's degree from University of Utah make $6,723 more than the typical public admin grad.
It's hard to beat University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus if you wish to pursue a master's degree in public administration. CU Anschutz is a very large public university located in the large city of Denver.
Those public administration students who get their master's degree from University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus earn $6,348 more than the typical public admin grad.
It is difficult to beat Boise State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in public administration. Boise State is a very large public university located in the city of Boise.
Master's students who receive their degree from the public admin program make an average of $55,582 in the first couple years of working.
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).
The public admin master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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