Public Administration & Social Service is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #5 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
College Factual looked at 34 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Public Administration & Social Service Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 6,847 master's degrees in public administration & social service to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Public Administration & Social Service School for Your Master's Degree
The public administration & social service master'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
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host 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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master'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 - How many other public administration & social service students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 & social service to pay back their student loans after receiving their master'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 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 & Social Service Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US 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).
The public administration & social service master'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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