Public Administration & Social Service is about average in terms of popularity for bachelor's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #16 out of the 38 majors across the country that we analyze each year. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
College Factual looked at 82 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Public Administration & Social Service Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 5,499 bachelor's degrees in public administration & social service during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Public Administration" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Doctorate - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Doctorate - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Services (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Services (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "PhD - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "PhD - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BSW - Social Work (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BSW - Social Work (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "DSW - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "DSW - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MSW - Social Work (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MSW - Social Work (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "PhD - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "PhD - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Doctorate Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Doctorate Programs (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BA in Human Services" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BA in Human Services" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Public Administration" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Public Administration" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 14
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 11 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.5
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 11
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Choosing a Great Public Administration & Social Service School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of public administration & social service for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to public administration & social service students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other public administration & social service students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt public administration & social service students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
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 bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Public Administration & Social Service Schools
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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BSW - Social Work (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BSW - Social Work (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BA in Human Services" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BA in Human Services" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Public Administration" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Public Administration" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 5
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 3 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.5
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 3
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DEBUG: Backfilling with 3 offers with relevance >= 0.8
ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study Public Administration & Social Service in the Great Lakes Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in public administration & social service. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
16 Top Great Lakes Region Schools for a Bachelor's in Public Administration & Social Service
Improve the lives of individuals, families and communities with the human service tools gained from this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Prepare yourself to make the decisions that best serve a community, its constituents and its economic growth with this specialized business degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Public Administration & Social Service Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region award.
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).