If you pursue a master's degree in public administration, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #19 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 12 schools in Texas to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of public administration. Combined, these schools handed out 673 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 consider a college'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.
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
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 schools 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 Texas list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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The University of Texas at Arlington is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in public administration. UT Arlington is a very large public university located in the city of Arlington.
Those public administration students who get their master's degree from The University of Texas at Arlington earn $7,538 more than the average public admin grad.
The University of Texas at Dallas is a good decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in public administration. UT Dallas is a fairly large public university located in the city of Richardson.
Students who graduate with their master's from the public admin program report average early career wages of $57,655.
The University of Texas at San Antonio is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in public administration. UTSA is a very large public university located in the large city of San Antonio.
Public Administration master's degree recipients from The University of Texas at San Antonio get an earnings boost of approximately $3,003 above the average earnings of public administration graduates.
Tarleton State University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in public administration. Located in the town of Stephenville, Tarleton is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the public administration major at Tarleton State University earn $10,578 more than the average 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).