Sustainability Science is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #98 most popular master's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Sustainability Science Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 204 master's degrees in sustainability science to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Sustainability Science School for Your Master's Degree
The sustainability science master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality sustainability science program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different 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 much a school focuses on sustainability science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of sustainability science 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 sustainability science 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 sustainability science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for sustainability science 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 Sustainability Science Master's Degree Schools in Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Sustainability Science in Illinois
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in sustainability science.
Top Illinois Schools for a Master's in Sustainability Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in sustainability science. UIUC is a very large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Master's students who receive their degree from the sustainability science program earn about $55,247 in the first couple years of working.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in sustainability science has to check out University of Illinois at Chicago. Located in the city of Chicago, UIC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the sustainability science program earn about $54,806 for their early career.
It's difficult to beat DePaul University if you want to pursue a master's degree in sustainability science. DePaul is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Students who graduate with their master's from the sustainability science program report average early career wages of $57,588.
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).
The sustainability science master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality sustainability science program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
