2025 Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Schools in Illinois
2Colleges in Illinois
172Parks & Rec Degrees Awarded
$34,246Avg Early-Career Salary
Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies isn't the most popular major in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #166 in popularity out of 395 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
College Factual reviewed 2 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for degree seekers in the field of parks, recreation & leisure studies. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 172 degrees in parks, recreation & leisure studies annually.
The parks & rec school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Schools in Illinois.
If you'd like to restrict your choices to just one part of the country, you can filter this list by location.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
Best Schools for Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies in Illinois
The schools below may not offer all types of parks & rec degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the best schools in the country for getting a degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Degree recipients from the parks, recreation & leisure studies degree program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign make $6,213 above the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a wonderful decision for students pursuing a degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies. Located in the distant town of Carbondale, SIUC is a public university with a large student population.
Graduates who receive their degree from the parks & rec program earn about $32,357 in the first couple years of working.
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).
