Religious Education isn't the most popular master's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #144 in popularity out of 343 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Religious Education Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 99 master's degrees in religious education 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
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 religious education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of religious education students who choose to seek a master'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 much debt religious education 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 religious education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for religious education 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 Religious Education Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Wheaton College Illinois is a great choice for individuals pursuing a master's degree in religious education. Located in the large suburb of Wheaton, Wheaton College Illinois is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
After graduation, religious ed master's recipients usually earn around $43,867 in their early 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).
