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Largest business schools in Illinois by degrees awarded

42 business schools in Illinois awarded 11,446 master’s degrees in business to first majors from July 2024 to June 2025, by NCES’s count: 4th of the 51 states and DC with a business school. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign awarded the most, 2,488. A business school here is a college that awarded at least one master’s degree in any program of NCES’s CIP family 52, Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services: the MBA and every other business master’s alike. The rule is broad by construction.

Master’s degrees in business awarded · July 2024 to June 2025, NCES’s 2025–26 collection

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Master’s degrees in business awarded, July 2024 to June 2025, NCES’s 2025–26 collection
RankNameFigure
1University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign2,488
2Northwestern University1,857
3University of Chicago1,320
4DeVry University-Illinois1,146
5DePaul University482
6Benedictine University439
7University of Illinois Chicago404
8Lewis University400
9Illinois Institute of Technology331
10Loyola University Chicago259
10Northern Illinois University259
12University of Illinois Springfield256
13Southern Illinois University Edwardsville230
14National Louis University166
15Aurora University121
16Illinois State University110
17Concordia University-Chicago108
18Roosevelt University105
19Elmhurst University90
20Governors State University86
21Western Illinois University84
22Dominican University71
23Olivet Nazarene University65
24Southern Illinois University-Carbondale61
25Eastern Illinois University49
25McKendree University49
25North Park University49
28University of St Francis48
29Lake Forest Graduate School of Management46
29North Central College46
31Rockford University35
32Saint Xavier University32
33Northeastern Illinois University30
34Bradley University29
35Quincy University23
36Millikin University21
37Judson University16
38Chicago State University14
39Greenville University9
40Adler University5
41Columbia College Chicago4
42Trinity International University-Illinois3

What this data cannot show

  • How a college is organized or accredited is not in NCES’s completions file: a college is of this type because of the degrees it reported, and a university’s whole count is here whichever of its schools awarded them.
  • First majors only. NCES counts a graduate with two majors under each; this counts each degree once, under the first.
  • Colleges that awarded the same number share a rank.
  • The 2025–26 collection is NCES’s newest. Its first release is provisional: institutions’ corrections arrive with the revised file about a year later. NCES imputes the awards of an institution that did not respond, and this table does not mark which.
  • Every institution in Illinois in NCES’s file that awarded these degrees has a college page here, and is in the table.
  • The state is the one NCES files the college under; a campus in another state is ranked there.

Sources

Data retrieved