If you plan on getting your master's degree in public policy, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #55 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.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Public Policy Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 579 master's degrees in public policy during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Public Policy School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of public policy for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality public policy 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
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to public policy students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other public policy students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 much debt public policy 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 public policy related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for public policy students working on their master'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 Public Policy Master's Degree Schools in California list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Featured Public Policy Programs
Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
Fit new strategic skills into your public service passion and goals when you earn an MBA in Public Administration from Southern New Hampshire University.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in public policy needs to check out University of Southern California. USC is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Los Angeles.
Master's recipients from the public policy degree program at University of Southern California earn $10,551 above the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
University of California - Riverside is a good decision for individuals interested in a master's degree in public policy. Located in the large city of Riverside, UCR is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the public policy program make an average of $40,275 in their early career salary.
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).
Your choice of public policy for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality public policy program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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