Quick answer: Criminology degrees usually cover criminological theory, research methods, statistics, and crime policy evaluation at bachelor’s and master’s level. It is a social science degree, not a procedural one, and the honest framing is that it trains an analytical skill set rather than qualifying you for a single job title. What the related occupations pay, and what they are projected to do, is below.
Most master’s programs include a thesis or applied capstone. That capstone is usually the single most useful artifact the degree produces, because it is what an analyst hiring panel can read.
CIP 45.0401 is a social science code. It sits in the 45.xx family alongside sociology, economics and political science, and 238 institutions awarded it at bachelor’s or master’s level in 2024 (IPEDS Completions, 2024). This site’s criminal justice page covers the 43.xx family, which is classified federally under homeland security, law enforcement and firefighting.
That is not a filing technicality. A 43.xx program is built around how the system works: procedure, evidence, courts, custody. A 45.0401 program is built around why offending happens and whether interventions work, and it is taught by social scientists with the methods sequence that implies. A reader searching “criminology degree” is usually after the second thing - analysis, research, policy - and landing on a survey criminal justice page gives them procedural coursework and a school list that does not award this code.
Separating the page means the schools listed below are the institutions that actually award CIP 45.0401. Before you request information anywhere, ask how much statistics and methods the program requires, because that is the part that carries the job market value. With that filter set, compare online criminology programs enrolling now:
Every school listed is verified in federal IPEDS data both to award this degree and to offer programs that can be completed entirely by distance education at this level. Whether this exact degree is delivered fully online varies by school, so confirm the format before you apply.
This page lists 10 schools, closest group first, then ordered by BOC Score with the highest at the top. 10 of them carry a score.
Scores come from IPEDS (2024) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard. Earnings are for all graduates of a school, not one program, so treat them as a signal about the institution rather than about this subject. Sponsored listings are paid placements and are labelled as such; they are separate from this ranking and never change it. Read the full methodology.
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Criminology has no occupation of its own in the federal data. The two SOC codes that come closest are detectives and criminal investigators, and sociologists, and neither is a clean match.
Detectives and criminal investigators earn a median $93,790 across employment of 114,430, with a 90th percentile of $160,540, and the occupation is projected to change by -0.7 percent through 2034 with about 7,800 openings a year (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Pay is strong. Growth is flat. And the route in is almost never the degree by itself - most investigative posts are filled from sworn officers or from federal agencies with their own hiring pipelines, and the degree is one qualification among several.
Sociologists earn a median $106,030 and are projected to grow 3.6 percent, but on an employment base of 2,260 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). That is one of the smallest occupations tracked anywhere on this site. A positive percentage on a base that size means roughly 300 openings a year nationally, and most of those posts expect a doctorate.
The jobs criminology graduates actually take are largely counted elsewhere: crime and intelligence analysts inside police agencies, research and evaluation staff at state agencies and nonprofits, compliance and risk analysts in the private sector, and policy roles in government. Those are real jobs with no dedicated SOC code, which is why this page shows you the two federal anchors and tells you plainly what they do and do not represent.
The employable core of this degree is methods, not theory. Agencies that hire criminology graduates are almost always buying the ability to work with data: build a defensible sample, run and explain a model, map incidents, and write the result so a commander or a legislator can act on it.
That has two practical consequences when you choose a program. Weight the statistics, methods and data sequence heavily, and treat theory as the thing that makes your analysis worth reading rather than the product itself. And take the applied capstone seriously, because analyst hiring is portfolio-driven in a way that procedural roles are not.
It also explains the gap between the two levels covered here. A bachelor’s in criminology is a strong general social science degree that pairs well with agency experience. A master’s is where the methods training gets deep enough to be the reason you are hired. Credit transfer is decided by the receiving institution and genuinely varies, so request a written transfer evaluation before you enroll.
Serving officers moving toward analysis or command. People who already know how incidents are generated on the street and want to work on the pattern rather than the call. The master’s is the common version of this move.
Anyone aiming at crime or intelligence analyst work. This is the degree those postings name most often, and the methods sequence is the qualification.
People from technical trades who like data. The reasoning criminology rewards - careful measurement, ruling out the alternative explanation, distrusting a clean-looking result - is the same reasoning good diagnostic work rewards. The mathematics required is statistics, not calculus.
People who want operational rather than analytical work are better served by the corrections degree or the criminal justice route, which map to specific job ladders in a way this one does not.
A criminology degree is designed to build research and analytical capability. It is not a license and it is not a hiring guarantee. Individual outcomes may vary, and is college worth it covers the general tradeoff.
Detectives and criminal investigators earn a median $93,790 across 114,430 jobs against a -0.7 percent projection, while sociologists earn a median $106,030 on an employment base of 2,260 with a 3.6 percent projection (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34).
| Metric | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Median annual wage | $93,790 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Wage range | $55,390 (10th pct) - $160,540 (90th pct) | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Employment | 114,430 detectives and criminal investigators | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Projected change (2024-34) | -0.7%, about 7,800 openings per year | BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34 |
| Typical credential | Bachelor’s for entry, master’s for analyst and research roles | Program catalogs |
| Institutions awarding | 238 | IPEDS Completions, 2024 |
| Geo coverage | State, metro and city pages - see Programs by State below | Site structure |
| SOC codes covered | 33-3021 detectives and criminal investigators; 19-3041 sociologists | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Role | Median | 75th percentile | Employment | Projected change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detectives and criminal investigators | $93,790 | $120,520 | 114,430 | -0.7% |
| Sociologists | $106,030 | $137,420 | 2,260 | 3.6% |
All wage and employment figures BLS OEWS, May 2025; growth figures BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34.
Read the two rows together and the picture is consistent. The investigative row pays well at scale but is not growing and is not entered directly from a degree. The academic row pays slightly better at the median and is growing, but on 2,260 jobs, which makes the percentage close to meaningless as a plan.
The realistic version is that this degree pays through roles that sit between those two rows and are counted under other codes. That is a weaker promise than a page like this usually makes, and it is the accurate one. If you need a degree that maps directly to a named, growing occupation, this is not it, and the honest thing is to say so before you enroll rather than after.
Criminology sits in the social sciences under CIP 45.0401 and studies why offending happens - theory, data, and the evaluation of what actually reduces crime. Criminal justice sits in the 43.xx family and studies how the system operates. The federal program codes are different because the disciplines are different, and so is the coursework you will sit.
The national median annual wage is $93,790 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The bottom 10 percent earn $55,390 or less and the top 10 percent earn $160,540 or more, across employment of 114,430.
Detectives and criminal investigators are projected to change by -0.7 percent from 2024 to 2034, with about 7,800 openings per year. Sociologists, the closest academic occupation, are projected to grow 3.6 percent but on a base of only 2,260 jobs (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Neither is a growth story, and this page treats that plainly.
238 institutions awarded CIP 45.0401 at bachelor's or master's level in 2024 (IPEDS Completions, 2024).
Crime and intelligence analysis, investigative roles that require a bachelor's degree, research and policy positions in agencies and nonprofits, and academic work at the doctoral level. Detectives and criminal investigators earn a median $93,790 and sociologists a median $106,030 (BLS OEWS, May 2025), but neither title is reached directly from the degree alone.
Yes. The discipline is reading, statistics and writing, with no laboratory or clinical component, so distance delivery is straightforward at both levels covered here.
It depends entirely on the target. For analyst and research roles the master's is often the differentiator, because the methods and statistics sequence is where the employable skill sits. For sworn investigative roles a bachelor's plus agency experience is usually the path. Individual outcomes may vary.
It can be, with one caution: this is a reading and statistics degree, not a procedural one. People who enjoy pattern-finding and data tend to do well in it. If the goal is an operational role rather than an analytical one, the corrections or criminal justice route is the better fit.
State pay, licensing and metro-level data for this degree. Wage and employment figures on every state page come from BLS OEWS, May 2025.
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About this guide: Researched and written by the TradeCareerPath Editorial Team. Our editorial team researches and sources every trade school and career guide using federal labor and education data, including BLS OEWS and Employment Projections, DOL apprenticeship records, IPEDS, College Scorecard, and state licensing boards. We follow the editorial standards documented at /editorial-policy/.
