If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in public administration, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #103 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 85 colleges and universities when compiling its 2024 Best Public Administration Bachelor's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 3,076 bachelor's degrees in public administration to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Public Administration School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The public admin bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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 host of various 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 much a school focuses on public administration students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other public administration students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 public administration 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 public administration related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public administration 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 Public Administration Bachelor's Degree Schools 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 Public Administration in the United States
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in public administration. Only those schools that rank in the top 15% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
Indiana University - Bloomington is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in public administration. Located in the city of Bloomington, IU Bloomington is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduating, public admin bachelor's recipients usually earn around $44,780 in their early careers.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is a great option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in public administration. Located in the city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduation, public admin bachelor's recipients generally make an average of $34,336 in their early careers.
It's difficult to beat Syracuse University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in public administration. Located in the city of Syracuse, Syracuse is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the public administration degree program at Syracuse University earn $3,454 above the average college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
CSUN is a very large public university located in the large city of Northridge.
Public Administration bachelor's degree recipients from California State University - Northridge receive an earnings boost of approximately $20,681 over the average earnings of public administration graduates.
Located in the town of Cullowhee, WCU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Public Administration bachelor's degree recipients from Western Carolina University earn a boost of about $11,149 over the typical earnings of public administration majors.
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Public Administration Bachelor's Degree Schools award.
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).