When it comes to popularity, a doctor's degree in public administration & social service sits in the middle of the road, ranking #15 out of 36 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 24 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for public administration & social service students pursuing a doctor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,692 doctor's degrees in public administration & social service to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Public Administration & Social Service School for Your Doctor's Degree
The public administration & social service doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public administration & social service program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different 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 doctorate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their doctor'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 & social service students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public administration & social service students who choose to seek a doctor'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 easy is it for public administration & social service to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized public administration & social service related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for public administration & social service students working on their doctor's degree.
The public administration & social service 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 & Social Service Doctor's Degree Schools.
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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 administration & social service doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public administration & social service program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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