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.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in New York to determine which ones were the best for public policy students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 77 master's degrees in public policy during the 2020-2021 academic year.
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 full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public policy students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Public Policy Master's Degree Schools in New York ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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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.
The New School is a great option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in public policy. New School University is a fairly large private not-for-profit school located in the large city of New York.
After graduation, public policy master's recipients typically earn about $50,442 in the first five years of their career.
Stony Brook University is a great option for students pursuing a master's degree in public policy. Located in the suburb of Stony Brook, SUNY Stony Brook is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the public policy program report average early career earnings of $47,720.
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).