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 reviewed 37 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of social work. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,423 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
The social work bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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 social work students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other social work 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 social work 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 social work related body.
Our full 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 the Southwest Region.
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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It is hard to beat Arizona State University - Tempe if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in social work. ASU - Tempe is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Tempe.
Bachelor's recipients from the social work program at Arizona State University - Tempe get $3,335 above the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
The University of Texas at Austin is a wonderful option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in social work. Located in the city of Austin, UT Austin is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the social work program earn an average of $37,437 in the first couple years of their career.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in social work needs to check out The University of Texas at Arlington. Located in the city of Arlington, UT Arlington is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the social work program report average early career wages of $38,174.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in social work has to look into Grand Canyon University. Located in the city of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University is a private for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the social work degree program at Grand Canyon University get $2,510 above the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Located in the city of San Marcos, Texas State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Social Work bachelor's degree recipients from Texas State University earn a boost of approximately $2,153 above the typical income of social work graduates.
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).