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Which Programs Are Included
A program is included when a college in the 50 states or DC reports it to the Department of Education's IPEDS survey in one of four subjects. Colleges file every program under a numbered subject category, and these four hold nearly every game degree: game and interactive media design; animation, interactive technology, video graphics and special effects; modeling, virtual environments and simulation; computer game programming. That's 354 programs at 271 schools in 43 states and DC, and the flagship ranking scores 89 colleges. Each ranking page says which subjects and which degree level it covers.
How We Count
Every count on this site uses these definitions, and the build checks each total against a recount from the raw IPEDS files.
- Program
- One college, one federal field code and one award level: an associate, bachelor's, master's or research doctorate that awarded at least one degree, as a first major, in the 2023-24 IPEDS completions file (C2024_A). Certificates are counted separately on the certificate page.
- Fields
- Game and interactive media design (CIP 50.0411), computer game programming (11.0204), modeling, virtual environments and simulation (11.0804), and animation, interactive technology, video graphics and special effects (10.0304).
- Where
- The 50 states and the District of Columbia, by the college's state in the IPEDS directory (HD2024). Territories are left out, and DC is counted apart from the states.
- Schools
- Distinct institutions (IPEDS unit IDs). A college with programs in several fields or at several levels counts once.
- Currently offered
- A program counts and can be ranked only if it is in IPEDS and the college offers it now and is admitting students to it, per the college's own website. Closed, discontinued and teach-out programs are removed even when IPEDS still lists them; each one is listed with its evidence in our data files.
- Game design only
- Figures labeled "game design code only" count CIP 50.0411 alone.
- Ranked
- The flagship ranking counts each college once, on its highest-scoring bachelor's in game design, game programming or simulation. A program is ranked only when IPEDS reports both an Outcome Measures completion rate and an average net price for its college, the inputs the score needs.
By field: 116 game design, 21 game programming, 30 simulation and 187 animation programs. By level: 181 bachelor's, 142 associate, 30 master's and 1 doctoral. Game design on its own has 116 programs at 108 schools.
Some well-known game programs sit in other subjects, such as computer science or fine arts. Their size can't be measured the same way, so they aren't scored. Where a ranking page lists one, the details come from the school's own program page.
How Bachelor's Programs Are Scored
Every bachelor's ranking uses the same three factors, and a program has the same score on every page it appears on. Scores are absolute, not graded on a curve: the national median score is 59.5 across the 89 colleges in the flagship ranking.
| Factor | Points | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Completion | 40 | IPEDS Outcome Measures: the share of all entering students, full-time, part-time and transfer, who earned an award within eight years. Points are proportional: 60% earns 24. |
| Net price | 40 | IPEDS average net price for first-time, full-time students who received grant aid (in-state, at public schools), on a sliding scale: all 40 points at or below $14,400 a year, none at $43,600 or more, falling evenly in between. |
| Size | 20 | The program's own graduates per year, averaged over 2022 to 2024, on a log scale with full marks at 50 a year. |
The Net Price Scale
The two anchors are the 10th and 90th percentile average net prices across every bachelor's program scored this way, game and animation together, rounded to $100: $14,400 and $43,600, from IPEDS 2022-23 net price data. They stay fixed for a full year and change only when the next year's data lands. Removing a program during the year doesn't move them, so it never changes any other program's score, only the places below it. The master's and certificate cost scales work the same way. A few sample points:
| Average net price | Points of 40 |
|---|---|
| $14,400 | 40 |
| $18,000 | 35.1 |
| $22,000 | 29.6 |
| $26,000 | 24.1 |
| $30,000 | 18.6 |
| $34,000 | 13.2 |
| $38,000 | 7.7 |
| $43,600 | 0 |
Completion and net price are school-wide figures. The federal government doesn't publish either by major, so a game design program gets its school's rate. Size is the program's own.
How Master's Programs Are Scored
Completion and net price are undergraduate measures, so master's programs are scored on two factors: average graduate tuition (in-state) for 60 points, on a sliding scale from $9,400 (all points) to $60,000 (none), the 10th and 90th percentile tuition of the ranked master's programs (IPEDS 2023-24, recalculated each year), and size for 40 points, with full marks at 20 graduates a year.
| Average graduate tuition | Points of 60 |
|---|---|
| $9,400 | 60 |
| $20,000 | 47.4 |
| $30,000 | 35.6 |
| $40,000 | 23.7 |
| $50,000 | 11.9 |
| $60,000 | 0 |
What Isn't Scored, and Why
- Earnings. The College Scorecard publishes earnings by field only at a level that lumps game design in with graphic and industrial design, and its school-wide earnings track completion so closely that scoring both would count the same thing twice.
- Reputation and surveys. No survey or editor's opinion goes into a score.
- Accreditation. No accreditor reviews game design programs specifically. What federal financial aid depends on is the school's institutional accreditation, so check that on any school you're considering.
Missing Data and Ties
A program missing any scored figure isn't scored on a guess. 209 programs are scored; 2 are listed without a score along with the reason; and 143 associate and doctoral programs are counted but not ranked. Programs with the same score share a rank, shown as T-4, and are listed by size.
Online Programs
IPEDS asks each school whether a program can be completed entirely by distance education. That answer is where the online ranking starts, not where it ends. A program appears in the online game design degree ranking only after its own page has been checked and says you can finish the whole degree online.
Corrections
If a figure is wrong or a program is missing, who runs this site explains how to reach us. The data is updated when the federal government publishes new files, and every page shows when it was last updated.
Sources
- 1 NCES, IPEDS Completions 2022 to 2024 and Completions by Distance Education 2024 Every program in the ranking, the field code it is filed under, its graduates each year, and whether the school reports it can be completed by distance education. 354 programs in four fields. Accessed .
- 2 NCES, IPEDS Outcome Measures 2023 The completion factor: the share of all entering students, full-time, part-time and transfer, who earned an award within eight years. School-wide.
- 3 NCES, IPEDS Student Financial Aid 2022-23, average net price The cost factor: average net price for first-time, full-time students who received grant aid, in-state for public schools. School-wide.
- 4 NCES, IPEDS Institutional Characteristics 2023-24, tuition Average graduate tuition, in-state and out-of-state, used for the master's cost factor.
- 5 U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard, institution data Median earnings ten years after entry, all majors at the school. Shown for context, not scored.
- 6 NCES, Classification of Instructional Programs 2020 The field codes that define which programs each ranking covers. Accessed .