Cal State San Bernardino’s criminal justice program has been named to two national lists, this time for its online bachelor’s degree program.

The Center for Online Education added CSUSB to its 25 Best Online Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice Degree Programs, listing it at No. 2 after Anderson University in South Carolina. And the Best Degree Program placed CSUSB’s program at No. 7 on its list of the top 30 programs in the nation.

For the 2016 rankings, the Center for Online Education employed a basic formula: Academic Quality + Online Offerings + Cost and Student Aid = Final Score, according to its website. This final score determines where a school ends up in its rankings.

The center’s methodology page details its key factors used in the rankings:

  • Academic quality makes up 50 percent of a school’s overall score. “First major” is a measure of the number of students majoring in the ranked subject. More students majoring in a subject is a good indicator of the strength of the program.
  • Online offerings make up 30 percent of a school’s overall score. As more colleges add online offerings, those with a longer history of success in online education earned a higher score. Schools that have a larger percentage of students enrolled in online programs as compared to overall student population also ranked higher.
  • Cost and student aid support make up 20 percent of a school’s overall score. Those colleges that had a lower average net price ranked higher, while a high student loan default rate lowered a school’s overall score.

To view the complete ranking by the Center for Online Education, go to its “Best Online Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice Degree Programs” web page.

The Best Degree Program said on its website that it evaluated “120 top institutions that offered at least one online bachelor’s degree program in criminal justice, criminology, or related discipline. From our list, we reviewed institution rankings from major publications like Forbes magazine, The Princeton Review, and U.S. News and World Report. We selected the most affordable schools based on NCES College Navigator’s published undergraduate tuition rate. Fort Hays State University in Kansas, the school with the most affordable tuition, was ranked No. 1 on our list.”

That complete list can be viewed online at “Top 30 Best online Criminal Justice Degree Programs (Bachelor’s) 2016.”

The latest ranking is a continuation of the national recognition the CSUSB criminal justice program receives.

In May, College Choice, a leading authority in college search and rankings, listed Cal State San Bernardino’s online criminal justice master’s degree program No. 12 in the United States, and the only California State University campus to make its “Best Online Masters in Criminal Justice Degree Programs, 2016” list.

In August 2015, Best Value Schools placed CSUSB’s criminal justice program at No. 3 in the nation in its list of the “50 Best Value Colleges for a Criminal Justice Degree 2015.”

Also ranked nationally in August was the criminal justice online master of arts degree, listed at No. 17 in SuperScholar’s “50 Best Online Criminal Justice Programs 2015,” and No. 20 by U.S. News & World Report in its “Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs.”

In 2009, the criminal justice program ranked third in the nation for the number of books its faculty produces, and second nationally on a per capita basis considering the number of faculty members per department, according to a study published by the Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice. The study ranked college criminal justice departments based on their production of scholarly books.

Visit the CSUSB Department of Criminal Justice website for more information on its programs.

California State University, San Bernardino is a preeminent center of intellectual and cultural activity in Inland Southern California. Opened in 1965 and set at the foothills of the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains, the university serves more than 20,000 students each year and graduates about 4,000 students annually.

CSUSB reflects the dynamic diversity of the region and has the most diverse student population of any university in the Inland Empire, and it has the second highest African American and Hispanic enrollments of all public universities in California. Seventy percent of those who graduate are the first in their families to do so.

For more information about Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu