2023 Most Focused Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Outdoor Education in the Great Lakes Region

It’s not easy to decide which college to attend when there so many options available for students. At College Factual, we’re committed to helping you make that decision by providing information such as that found in our “Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region” ranking.

Outdoor Education is the 313th most popular major in the country with 265 degrees awarded in 2020-2021. In 2019-2020, outdoor education graduates who were awarded their degree in 2017-2019, earned an average of $27,786 and had an average of $18,614 in loans still to pay off.

Across the Great Lakes region, there were 21 outdoor education graduates with average earnings and debt of $0 and $0 respectively. At the bachelor’s degree level specifically, there were 21 outdoor education graduates with average earnings and debt of $40,343 and $26,790 respectively.

For this year’s “Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region” ranking, we looked at 2 colleges that offer a degree in outdoor education. The colleges and universities that top this list are recognized because their outdoor education program is one of the largest majors offered at the school.

Check out our ranking methodology for more information.

One Size Does Not Fit All

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 “Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region” list to help you make the college decision.

We’ve created a tool called College Combat that lets you create your own customized comparisons based on the factors that matter the most to you. Test it out by comparing your favorite schools against others you are considering, or bookmark the tool so you can experiment with it later.

Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region

The following schools top our list of the Best “Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region”.

Top 2 Most Focused Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Outdoor Education in the Great Lakes Region

1

Northland College
Ashland, Wisconsin

Out of the 2 schools in the Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region that were part of this year’s ranking, Northland College landed the #1 spot on the list. Northland College is a small school located in Ashland, Wisconsin that handed out 5 bachelors’s outdoor ed degrees in 2020-2021.

The impressive undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio of 10 to 1 means that students may have more opportunities to work more closely with their professors than they would at other schools.

Read more about Outdoor Education at Northland College

2

Central Michigan University
Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Top 25% overall quality in Great Lakes

You’ll join some of the best and brightest minds around if you attend Central Michigan University. The school came in at #2 for the Schools for a Bachelor’s Highly Focused on Outdoor Ed Major in the Great Lakes Region. Central Michigan University is a fairly large public school situated in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. It awarded 16 bachelors’s outdoor ed degrees in 2020-2021.

The undergrad student loan default rate at the school is 4.8%, which is quite low when compared to the national default rate of 10.1%.

Full Central Michigan University Outdoor Education Report

• Most Focused Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Outdoor Education

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

• *Avg Salary and Avg 4-Year Grad Rate 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 SLenartowicz.