Social Work is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #3 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 10 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Social Work Master's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 589 master's degrees in social work during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of social work for getting your master'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. 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 make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to social work students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other social work students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 social work students go into to obtain their master'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 social work related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for social work students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Social Work Master's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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The University of Tennessee - Knoxville is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in social work. Located in the city of Knoxville, UT Knoxville is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the social work program report average early career income of $46,667.
Southern Adventist University is a great choice for students pursuing a master's degree in social work. Southern Adventist is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Collegedale.
Soon after graduating, social work master's recipients generally earn an average of $47,542 in their early careers.
It's difficult to beat University of Memphis if you wish to pursue a master's degree in social work. UofM is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Memphis.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the social work program make around $47,507 in the first couple years of their career.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in social work has to look into Union University. Union is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Jackson.
Soon after graduation, social work master's recipients typically make about $44,041 at the beginning of their careers.
Middle Tennessee State University is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Murfreesboro.
Master's recipients from the social work degree program at Middle Tennessee State University earn $4,707 more than the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Tennessee State University is a moderately-sized public university located in the city of Nashville.
Master's recipients from the social work major at Tennessee State University make $2,557 more than the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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).
Your choice of social work for getting your master'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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
