Public Administration & Social Service isn't the most popular doctorate program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #15 in popularity out of 36 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for public administration & social service students pursuing a doctor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 317 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 combination 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 doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor'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 & 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 complete 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.
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 & Social Service Doctor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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