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 5 schools in Kentucky to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of public administration. Combined, these schools handed out 151 master's degrees in public administration to qualified students.
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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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree 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.
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 complete 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.
The public admin school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Public Administration Master's Degree Schools in Kentucky.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in public administration has to take a look at University of Kentucky. Located in the city of Lexington, UK is a public university with a fairly large student population.
After graduating, public admin master's recipients usually earn around $57,725 in the first five years of their career.
It's difficult to beat Eastern Kentucky University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in public administration. Located in the town of Richmond, Eastern is a public university with a large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the public admin program report average early career earnings of $54,235.
Murray State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in public administration. Murray State is a moderately-sized public university located in the distant town of Murray.
Students who graduate with their master's from the public admin program state that they receive average early career earnings of $53,876.
Located in the suburb of Highland Heights, NKU is a public university with a large student population.
Master's recipients from the public administration program at Northern Kentucky University make $2,190 above the typical college 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).
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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