When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in general family & consumer sciences sits in the middle of the road, ranking #176 out of 343 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
In 2024, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Family & Consumer Sciences Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 75 master's degrees in general family & consumer sciences during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great General Family & Consumer Sciences School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of general family & consumer sciences for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 general family & consumer sciences students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general family & consumer sciences 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 easy is it for general family & consumer sciences to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general family & consumer sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general family & consumer sciences students working on their master's degree.
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 General Family & Consumer Sciences Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study General Family & Consumer Sciences in the Great Lakes Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in general family & consumer sciences.
Top Great Lakes Region Schools for a Master's in Consumer Science
It's hard to beat Illinois State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in general family & consumer sciences. Illinois State is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized suburb of Normal.
Master's recipients from the general family & consumer sciences major at Illinois State University make $2,204 more than the typical college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Eastern Illinois University is a good choice for students interested in a master's degree in general family & consumer sciences. Located in the town of Charleston, EIU is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Soon after graduating, consumer science master's recipients usually earn an average of $39,634 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).