If you're seeking a Master's Degree in area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies, you will have fewer peers than average since the major degree program is the #30 one in the country in terms of popularity.While this may limit the number of schools that offer the degree program, there are still top-quality ones to be found.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 7 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Area, Ethnic, Culture, & Gender Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 295 master's degrees in area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Area, Ethnic, Culture, & Gender Studies School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies for getting your master'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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for area, ethnic, culture, & gender studies students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Area, Ethnic, Culture, & Gender Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Featured Area, Ethnic, Culture, & Gender Studies Programs
Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
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).