a bachelor's degree in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #13 out of 38 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 7 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Oregon ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 577 bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. 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 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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies 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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies 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 Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Oregon 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 Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies in Oregon
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies.
Top Oregon Schools for a Bachelor'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).