Nursing is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #2 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in Maine to determine which ones were the best for nursing students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 166 master's degrees in nursing to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Nursing School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of nursing 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 include 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.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master'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 many resources a school devotes to nursing students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other nursing students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 much debt nursing 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 nursing related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for nursing 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 Nursing Master's Degree Schools in Maine ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Nursing in Maine
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in nursing.
Saint Joseph's College of Maine is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in nursing. Located in the rural area of Standish, Saint Joseph's Maine is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the nursing program report average early career wages of $108,663.
University of Southern Maine is a wonderful choice for individuals interested in a master's degree in nursing. University of Southern Maine is a medium-sized public university located in the small city of Portland.
Master's students who receive their degree from the nursing program earn an average of $102,817 in the first couple years of their career.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in nursing has to take a look at University of New England. Located in the midsize suburb of Biddeford, UNE is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Those nursing students who get their master's degree from University of New England earn $99,076 more than the standard nursing grad.
It is hard to beat Husson University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in nursing. Located in the small city of Bangor, Husson is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the nursing program make around $119,742 for their early career.
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).
Your choice of nursing 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
