If you pursue a master's degree in social work, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #3 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 3 schools in Oregon to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of social work. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 304 master's degrees in social work during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Master's Degree
The social work master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality social work program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 social work students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of social work 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 social work 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 social work related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for social work 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 Social Work Master's Degree Schools in Oregon list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Social Work in Oregon
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in social work.
It's hard to beat Portland State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in social work. Located in the large city of Portland, Portland State University is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those social work students who get their master's degree from Portland State University make $3,582 more than the typical social work graduate.
Pacific University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in social work. Pacific is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Forest Grove.
Master's students who receive their degree from the social work program earn about $45,877 in their early career salary.
It is difficult to beat George Fox University if you want to pursue a master's degree in social work. GFU is a small private not-for-profit university located in the fringe town of Newberg.
Soon after graduating, social work master's recipients generally make about $44,147 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).
college factual
The social work master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality social work program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
