If you pursue a bachelor's degree in social work, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #24 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 10 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Social Work Bachelor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 657 bachelor's degrees in social work during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of social work for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social work 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
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various 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 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
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 social work students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of social work students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 social work to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
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 bachelor's degree.
The social work school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Social Work Bachelor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania.
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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Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in social work has to take a look at Temple University. Temple is a very large public university located in the large city of Philadelphia.
Bachelor's recipients from the social work program at Temple University earn $2,974 above the standard college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in social work. Located in the town of Kutztown, Kutztown University is a public university with a medium-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the social work program report average early career earnings of $37,135.
It's hard to beat University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Campus if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in social work. Pitt is a very large public university located in the large city of Pittsburgh.
Social Work bachelor's degree recipients from University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Campus earn a boost of about $4,755 over the average earnings of social work majors.
It's hard to beat Millersville University of Pennsylvania if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in social work. Millersville is a medium-sized public university located in the large suburb of Millersville.
Soon after graduating, social work bachelor's recipients generally earn around $33,119 at the beginning of their careers.
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).