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Most Popular Parks, Recreation, Leisure & Fitness Graduate Certificate Schools in California

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2023 Most Popular Parks, Recreation, Leisure & Fitness Graduate Certificate Schools in California

3 Colleges

Finding the Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Graduate Certificate School for You

With 1,097 degrees and certificates handed out in 2020-2021, parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies is the #16 most popular major in California.

With all the programs available today, it can be tough to choose which one is the best for you. You can choose a traditional brick and mortar school, or with the growth of online education, you can attend a school half-way across the country without even leaving your house. Also there are many trade schools that offer short-term programs that open up more career options.

Along with in-depth profiles of schools and the programs they offer, Grad Degree Search has created the Most Popular Parks, Recreation, Leisure & Fitness Graduate Certificate Schools in California to help you in your search for the best school for you. Our analysis looked at 3 schools in California to see which graduate certificate programs were the most popular for students. To create this ranking we looked at how many students graduated from the Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies program at each school on the list.

The following schools top our list of the Most Popular Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Graduate Certificate Colleges.

#1

National University

La Jolla, CA

Our 2023 rankings named National University the most popular school in California for parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies students working on their graduate certificate. National University is a large private not-for-profit school located in the large city of La Jolla.

Read full report on Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies at National University

The in-demand graduate certificate programs at California State University - Long Beach helped the school earn the #2 place on this year’s ranking of the most popular parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies schools in California. Located in the large city of Long Beach, CSULB is a public school with a fairly large student population.

Full Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies at California State University - Long Beach Report

#3

San Francisco State University

San Francisco, CA

Out of the 3 schools in California that were part of this year’s ranking, San Francisco State University landed the # 3 spot on the list. SFSU is a very large public school located in the city of San Francisco.

Full Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies at San Francisco State University Report

Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Colleges in the Far Western US Region

Explore all the Most Popular Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Colleges in the Far Western US Area or other specific states within that region.

State Degrees Awarded
Washington 122
Oregon 67
Nevada 13
Hawaii 12
Alaska 5

Parks & Rec Majors to Study

Major Annual Graduates
Health & Physical Education 9,742
Recreation Administration 441
Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies 206
Other Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies 35
Outdoor Education 28

Majors Similar to Parks & Rec

Related Major Annual Graduates
Public Administration & Social Service 53,252
Legal Professions 45,189
Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting 13,045
Military Technologies & Applied Sciences 1,613

Notes and References

*These averages are for the top 3 schools only.

  • 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).
  • Credit for the banner image above goes to NPS Photo/Zurbuch.

More about our data sources and methodologies.

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