When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies sits in the middle of the road, ranking #16 out of 37 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Master's Degree Schools in Minnesota ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 174 master's degrees in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies School for Your Master's Degree
The parks & rec master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality parks & rec 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 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 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 master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master'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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness 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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness 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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies 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 Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Master's Degree Schools in Minnesota list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies in Minnesota
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies.
Top Minnesota Schools for a Master's in Parks & Rec
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).