Public Administration is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #103 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual reviewed 8 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of public administration. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 752 bachelor's degrees in public administration during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Public Administration School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The public admin bachelor'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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor'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 college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 - How many other public administration students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 easy is it for public administration to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
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 bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
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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Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in public administration needs to check out Indiana University - Bloomington. Located in the city of Bloomington, IU Bloomington is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Public Administration bachelor's degree recipients from Indiana University - Bloomington receive an earnings boost of approximately $4,841 over the average income of public administration graduates.
It is difficult to beat Ohio State University - Main Campus if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public administration. Located in the city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the public admin program make an average of $41,650 in the first couple years of their career.
It's difficult to beat Indiana University - Purdue University - Indianapolis if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public administration. IUPUI is a very large public university located in the large city of Indianapolis.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the public admin program earn around $43,110 in the first couple years of working.
It's difficult to beat Central Michigan University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public administration. Located in the distant town of Mount Pleasant, Central Michigan is a public university with a large student population.
Public Administration bachelor's degree recipients from Central Michigan University get an earnings boost of approximately $4,129 over the typical earnings of public administration majors.
Located in the town of Oxford, Miami University - Oxford is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the public administration major at Miami University - Oxford make $3,106 above the average graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
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 bachelor'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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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