Public Administration & Social Service is about average in terms of popularity for doctor's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #15 out of the 36 majors across the country that we analyze each year. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Public Administration & Social Service Doctor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 174 doctor's degrees in public administration & social service during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor'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 doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor'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 & 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 schools for public administration & social service students working on their doctor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Public Administration & Social Service Doctor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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