2025 Best Early Childhood Education Schools in Iowa
3Colleges in Iowa
142Child development Degrees Awarded
If you pursue a degree in early childhood education, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #34 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Early Childhood Education Schools in Iowa ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 142 degrees in early childhood education annually.
Your choice of early childhood education school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. We derive our Best Overall Early Childhood Education School rankings by rolling up our degree-level rankings after weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each school.
You may want to choose one of the degree levels below to find the schools of most interest to you.
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 Early Childhood Education Schools in Iowa list to help you make the college decision.
You can also filter this list by location to find schools closer to you.
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.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
Best Schools for Early Childhood Education in Iowa
The schools below may not offer all types of child development degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer.
It's difficult to beat University of Northern Iowa if you wish to pursue a degree in early childhood education. Located in the city of Cedar Falls, UNI is a public university with a moderately-sized student population. This university ranks 3rd out of 37 schools for overall quality in the state of Iowa.
There were about 46 early childhood education students who graduated with this degree at UNI in the most recent year we have data available.
Every student pursuing a degree in early childhood education needs to check out Iowa State University. Located in the small city of Ames, Iowa State is a public university with a very large student population. A Best Colleges rank of #88 out of 2,152 schools nationwide means Iowa State is a great university overall.
There were roughly 23 early childhood education students who graduated with this degree at Iowa State in the most recent year we have data available.
Every student who is interested in early childhood education has to look into Northwestern College. Located in the town of Orange City, NWC is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population. This college ranks 18th out of 37 colleges for overall quality in the state of Iowa.
There were approximately 48 early childhood education students who graduated with this degree at NWC in the most recent year we have data available.
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).
Credit for the banner image above goes to Vgrigas.
Your choice of early childhood education school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. We derive our Best Overall Early Childhood Education School rankings by rolling up our degree-level rankings after weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each school.
