Nursing is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #2 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 95 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Nursing Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 22,505 bachelor's degrees in nursing during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Nursing School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The nursing bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality nursing program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on nursing students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of nursing students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 easy is it for nursing to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
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 bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Nursing Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list, to help you choose the best school for 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 Bachelor’s Students to Study Nursing in the Southwest Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in nursing. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
19 Top Southwest Region Schools for a Bachelor's in Nursing
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in nursing has to take a look at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Located in the large city of Lubbock, TTUHSC is a public university with a small student population.
After graduation, nursing bachelor's recipients generally earn about $77,083 in their early careers.
It is hard to beat The University of Texas Medical Branch if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in nursing. UTMB Galveston is a small public university located in the city of Galveston.
Those nursing students who get their bachelor's degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch receive $2,559 more than the standard nursing grad.
It's hard to beat The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in nursing. UTHealth is a moderately-sized public university located in the city of Houston.
Nursing bachelor's degree recipients from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston earn a boost of approximately $4,169 above the typical earnings of nursing majors.
Grand Canyon University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in nursing. Located in the large city of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University is a private for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Nursing bachelor's degree recipients from Grand Canyon University get an earnings boost of around $14,907 above the average income of nursing majors.
West Coast University - Dallas is a small private for-profit university located in the midsize city of Richardson.
Nursing bachelor's degree recipients from West Coast University - Dallas receive an earnings boost of around $17,985 above the typical income of nursing majors.
UNM is a very large public university located in the large city of Albuquerque.
Nursing bachelor's degree recipients from University of New Mexico - Main Campus get an earnings boost of around $4,342 above the average earnings of nursing majors.
Rest of the Top Best Nursing Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region
Additional Noteworthy Schools
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Nursing Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region award.
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).