2023 Best Value Public Finance Schools

It’s not easy to decide which college to attend when there so many options available for students. College Factual has developed its “Best Value Public Finance Schools” ranking as one item you can use to help make this decision.

Public Finance is the 1168th most popular major in the country with 48 degrees awarded in 2020-2021.

This year’s “Best Value Public Finance Schools” ranking looked at 2 colleges that offer degrees in a bachelor’s in public finance. This ranking identifies schools with high-quality public finance programs that also have a lower cost than schools of similar quality.

Some of the factors we look at when determining these rankings are overall quality of the public finance program at the school and the cost of the school after aid is awarded among other things. See our ranking methodology to learn more.

More Ways to Rank Public Finance Schools

When choosing the right school for you, it’s important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we’ve created a number of major-specific rankings, including this “Best Value Public Finance Schools” list to help you make the college decision.

In addition to College Factual’s rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you. Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.

Best Value Public Finance Schools

The following schools top our list of the Best Best Value Public Finance Schools.

Top 2 Best Value Colleges for Public Finance

1

York College of Pennsylvania
York, Pennsylvania

#2 in overall quality

$22,233 Average Net Price

$44,412 Average Early-Career Earnings

You’ll join some of the best and brightest minds around if you attend York College of Pennsylvania. The school came in at #1 for the Best Value Public Finance Schools. York College of Pennsylvania is a small school located in York, Pennsylvania that handed out 14 ’s public finance degrees in 2020-2021.

YCP also took the #2 spot in our “Best Public Finance Schools” ranking. It costs about $22,233 for public finance students per year to attend York College of Pennsylvania.

The school has an impressive undergrad student loan default rate. It’s only 3.4%, which is much lower than the national rate of 10.1%.

Read more about Public Finance at York College of Pennsylvania

2

Niagara University
Niagara University, New York

#1 in overall quality

$19,635 Average Net Price

$40,305 Average Early-Career Earnings

Out of the 2 schools in the Best Value Public Finance Schools that were part of this year’s ranking, Niagara University landed the #2 spot on the list. Niagara University is a private not-for-profit institution located in Niagara University, New York. The school has a small population, and it awarded 20 ’s degrees in 2020-2021.

Niagara did well in our major quality rankings, too. It placed #1 on our “Best Public Finance Schools” list. It costs about $19,635 for Public Finance students per year to attend Niagara University.

The low undergrad student loan default rate of 4.1% is a good sign that students have an easier time paying off their loans than they might at other schools. For comparison, the national default rate is 10.1%.

Full Niagara Public Finance Report

Notes and References

References

• 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 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).
• Information about the national average student loan default rate is from the U.S. Department of Education and refers to data about the 2016 borrower cohort tracking period for which the cohort default rate (CDR) was 10.1%.

Read more about our data sources and methodologies

Footnotes

• *Average salary, average net price, and average tuition and fees are for the top schools only.
• Some schools otherwise deserving of recognition may have been removed from this ranking in the event that new data identified post-publication warranted it, or at the request of the school.

Credits

• Credit for the banner image above goes to Dave Dugdale.