If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #123 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2024 Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 127 bachelor's degrees in parks, recreation & leisure studies during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of parks, recreation & leisure studies for getting your bachelor'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 bachelor'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 include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor'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 many resources a school devotes to parks, recreation & leisure studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of parks, recreation & leisure studies students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 parks, recreation & leisure studies to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized parks, recreation & leisure studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for parks, recreation & leisure studies students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies in Illinois
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for parks, recreation & leisure studies students seeking a a bachelor's degree.
Top Illinois Schools for a Bachelor's in Parks & Rec
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Those parks, recreation & leisure studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign make $5,657 more than the typical parks & rec graduate.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a good choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies. SIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Carbondale.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the parks & rec program report average early career wages of $25,457.
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.