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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in Iowa to determine which ones were the best for social work students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 249 master's degrees in social work to qualified students.
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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 colleges for social work 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 Social Work Master's Degree Schools in Iowa list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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University of Iowa is a wonderful option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in social work. Iowa is a fairly large public university located in the city of Iowa City.
Students who graduate with their master's from the social work program state that they receive average early career wages of $49,761.
University of Northern Iowa is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in social work. Located in the small city of Cedar Falls, UNI is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Those social work students who get their master's degree from University of Northern Iowa earn $3,312 more than the standard social work graduate.
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).
