About Best Criminal Justice Degree
This site is built so you don’t have to take it on trust. Every program comes from the federal government’s own record of who awarded a criminal justice degree, every figure names its source, and the model that orders the programs is short enough to read in full.
Meet Trevor Rupe
How a Program Gets Onto This Site
The list comes from one place: the federal record of every school that reported a criminal justice award for the 2023-24 academic year. Every school on it is here, 1,667 schools in the federal data in all. No school can be added by asking or left out by request. A school whose own page says it has closed or stopped admitting stays in the directory with its notice and leaves the ranked lists.
A school’s program is ranked at an award level when the school takes part in federal student aid and confers enough degrees at that level for its figures to mean something. 1,377 ranked schools clear that bar at one level or more. The rest are listed with their federal figures and are not ranked.
What the Ranking Measures
Every award level is scored on the same six factors: cost at 22%, graduate earnings at 22%, completion at 17%, online experience at 17%, track record at 11% and program reputation at 11%. Associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs are each scored only against the others at their own level. The national lists score every ranked program on what a resident pays for one credit, and a state page is that list kept to the state’s programs. The online programs at a level are scored among themselves, on what an online student from another state pays for a credit. The methodology sets out every step, including what was left out and why.
What We Will Not Do
- No school pays for a position. Schools can buy the sponsored listings Esyoh serves, which are marked as ads, but a listing is not ranked and cannot move a school’s rank.
- No reputation polls. Program reputation is a rating that a language model produces for each program, the same way for every program, and no page states it as a fact about a school.
- No invented figures. Every number comes from IPEDS, College Scorecard, BLS, a state officer standards board or statute, or a school’s own page, and the source is named where it appears.
- No reward for a missing figure. When a program has no figure for a factor, the factor still counts at full weight and scores the median of the programs it is ranked with, and the program’s card leaves it off. A missing price is stricter: the program scores as if it costs more than most, and it can never outscore the best program that has a price. Either way, a program cannot rise because a number is unpublished.
- No claim of program accreditation. Criminal justice has no program accreditor: schools are accredited, and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences offers a voluntary endorsement to a few programs.
- No suggestion that a degree makes you an officer. Each state’s officer standards board sets its own training and certification rules.
Who Publishes This Site
Best Criminal Justice Degree is published by Savo Media Group. Savo Media Group is Trevor Rupe and Taylor Rupe, who research and publish data-led education guides like this one. Taylor sets the direction the sites are researched and written to; Trevor edits this one and answers for what is on it.
No school, agency or professional body has any say in what is published here, and that includes the schools that buy sponsored listings. The rankings rest on the sources and rules that the methodology page names for every score, which is the only argument for trusting them that this site is willing to make.
How This Site Is Funded
This site earns money from sponsored school listings served by the education ad network Esyoh, which are marked as ads wherever they appear. Schools pay to appear in those listings, not in the rankings: a listing is not scored, and no listing can change a ranking. Rankings are scored on federal records, published prices and a reputation rating made the same way for every program, and program details come from each school’s own published pages.
Esyoh is paid by the schools that advertise with it, and this site earns a commission from the listings it shows. Where a page carries them, they sit apart from the rankings, the cards and the tables, and what Esyoh’s script receives is set out on the privacy page.
Reporting a Correction
Federal files are released once a year, schools change their programs and prices, and state boards revise their rules. Every program card links the school’s own page and every rule links its source. If something is wrong, write to hello@savomediagroup.com with the page and the figure. Corrections are made to the underlying data, which changes the score, rather than to the wording around it.