Religious Education is about average in terms of popularity for bachelor's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #183 out of the 363 majors across the country that we analyze each year. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 11 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for religious education students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 609 bachelor's degrees in religious education to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Religious Education School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of religious education for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality religious ed 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
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 religious education students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other religious education 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 religious education 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 religious education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for religious education students working on their bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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's difficult to beat Wheaton College Illinois if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in religious education. Wheaton College Illinois is a small private not-for-profit college located in the suburb of Wheaton.
After graduation, religious ed bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $31,892 in the first five years of their career.
It's hard to beat Biola University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in religious education. Located in the large suburb of La Mirada, Biola is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the religious ed program earn around $30,887 in their early career salary.
It's hard to beat Franciscan University of Steubenville if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in religious education. Franciscan U is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Steubenville.
After graduating, religious ed bachelor's recipients usually make around $35,803 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in religious education needs to look into Dallas Baptist University. DBU is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Dallas.
Soon after graduating, religious ed bachelor's recipients generally make about $32,426 in the first five years of their career.
Located in the city of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University is a private for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those religious education students who get their bachelor's degree from Grand Canyon University make $2,859 more than the typical religious ed student.
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 religious education for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality religious ed program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
