If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #13 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
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 Arkansas ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 662 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
The parks & rec bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor'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 consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various 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 bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor'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 many resources a school devotes to parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 much debt parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students go into to obtain their bachelor'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 full 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 bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Schools
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, & Fitness Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in Arkansas.
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 Bachelor’s Students to Study Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies in Arkansas
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students seeking a a bachelor's degree.
Top Arkansas 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).