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2024 Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee

2 Ranked Colleges
104 Degrees Awarded
$19,300 Avg Net Price*
Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee

When pursuing a degree in today’s world, students have many different options to choose from. Our mission at College Factual is to arm you with as much information as we can to help you make that decision. Our “Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee” ranking is one tool we have developed to help in this regard.

Public Policy is the 113th most popular major in the country with 6,430 degrees awarded in 2020-2021. In 2019-2020, public policy graduates who were awarded their degree in 2017-2019, earned an average of $49,451 and had an average of $21,866 in loans still to pay off.

Across Tennessee, there were 104 public policy graduates with average earnings and debt of $45,998 and $0 respectively.

This year’s “Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee” ranking analyzed 2 colleges that offered a degree in public policy. The schools that top this list are recognized because they have great public policy programs and cost less that schools of similar quality.

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

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The public policy school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we’ve developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of “Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee”.

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. We encourage you to try it out and pit your favorite colleges and universities head to head! If you don’t have time right now, you can bookmark it for later.

Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee

The following schools top our list of the Best Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee.

Top 2 Best Value Colleges for Public Policy in Tennessee

1

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend The University of Tennessee - Knoxville. It ranked #1 on our 2024 Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee list. This large school is located in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it awarded 28 ’s public policy degrees in 2020-2021.

UT Knoxville also took the #2 spot in our “Best Public Policy Schools in Tennessee” ranking. The yearly cost to attend UT Knoxville is $18,579 for tennessee public policy students.

The school has an excellent freshman retention rate of 88%, which means students like the school well enough to return for a second year. The school has an impressive undergrad student loan default rate. It’s only 3.1%, which is much lower than the national rate of 10.1%.

Read full report on Public Policy at UT Knoxville

2
Vanderbilt crest
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend Vanderbilt University. It ranked #2 on our 2024 Best Value Public Policy Schools in Tennessee list. Vanderbilt University is a fairly large private not-for-profit school situated in Nashville, Tennessee. It awarded 59 ’s public policy degrees in 2020-2021.

In addition to being on our tennessee public policy students list, Vanderbilt has also earned the #1 rank in our “Best Public Policy Schools in Tennessee” ranking. It costs about $19,970 for tennessee public policy students per year to attend Vanderbilt.

The low undergrad student loan default rate of 0.9% 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%. Students who start out at the school are likely to stick around. The freshman retention rate is 97%. The impressive undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio of 8 to 1 means that students may have more opportunities to work more closely with their professors than they would at other schools.

Read full report on Public Policy at Vanderbilt University

Notes and References

References

Read more about our data sources and methodologies

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