Best Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Degree Programs Ranked for 2023

Published: Jul 7, 2021
Updated: Sep 8, 2023

Find top-ranked online bachelor’s in social work degree programs for students wanting to become an advocate for those who need it most.

The Top 10 Online Bachelor's in Social Work Degrees

University of Iowa
Wayne State University
University of Cincinnati
University of Kentucky
Saint Louis University
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
University of Montana
Portland State University
Liberty University
Northern Arizona University

Grand View University 100%
Liberty University 99%
Portland State University 98%
Eastern Kentucky University 98%
West Texas A&M University 97%
Troy University 95%
University of Kentucky 94%
Keuka College 94%
Mount Vernon Nazarene University 87%
University of Iowa 86%

Northern Arizona University 22 to 1
Angelo State University 21 to 1
Aurora University 20 to 1
University of Cincinnati 19 to 1
University of Missouri–St. Louis 19 to 1
Portland State University 19 to 1
University of Montana 18 to 1
Southwestern Assemblies of God University 18 to 1
Troy University 18 to 1
Liberty University 17 to 1

Saint Louis University $48,824
Moravian University $48,730
Simmons University $43,062
Saint Joseph's College of Maine $39,986
Ursuline College $35,720
Keuka College $35,030
Mount Vernon Nazarene University $32,864
King University $32,838
Grand View University $30,864
Our Lady of the Lake University $29,926

Ursuline College $22,320
Saint Louis University $21,960
Simmons University $21,384
Keuka College $20,345
Moravian University $17,874
Wayne State University $16,920
Our Lady of the Lake University $16,650
Union Institute & University $15,911
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa $15,600
Portland State University $14,817

Mount Vernon Nazarene University
Saint Joseph's College of Maine
Kentucky Christian University
Moravian University
Grand View University
Ursuline College
Campbellsville University
Keuka College
Our Lady of the Lake University
West Texas A&M University

University of Missouri–St. Louis 57%
Kentucky Christian University 58%
Wayne State University 63%
King University 66%
Our Lady of the Lake University 66%
Angelo State University 70%
Saint Louis University 70%
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 70%
Campbellsville University 78%
Moravian University 78%

Union Institute & University 7 to 1
Ursuline College 8 to 1
Saint Louis University 9 to 1
Simmons University 9 to 1
King University 11 to 1
Our Lady of the Lake University 11 to 1
Moravian University 11 to 1
Keuka College 12 to 1
Grand View University 12 to 1
Saint Joseph's College of Maine 12 to 1

Angelo State University $4,495
University of Montana $5,352
West Texas A&M University $6,211
Tennessee State University $7,128
Portland State University $8,106
University of Iowa $8,356
Troy University $9,312
Eastern Kentucky University $9,452
University of Cincinnati $10,099
Northern Arizona University $10,381

Angelo State University $4,181
University of Montana $4,932
Kentucky Christian University $4,950
West Texas A&M University $5,086
Southwestern Assemblies of God University $7,650
Liberty University $7,847
Campbellsville University $8,473
Troy University $8,550
Grand View University $9,270
Tennessee State University $9,524

Key Takeaways

An online bachelor’s in social work is a perfect degree choice for students who have a big heart and a passion for community and service.
With a degree in social work, students are immersed in lessons on caring intervention and social policy which will qualify them for different careers in community and social service.
Because of the popularity of online education, most colleges and universities today offer online bachelor’s of social work degree programs, and most of them are in asynchronous formats with no set meeting times.

Table of Contents

Featured Programs

Navigating the Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Program

An online bachelor’s in social work allows students to compete for entry-level, non-clinical roles in so many professional settings. Whether you want to work as a probation officer at your county prison, become a case management aide at your children’s hospital, or a behavioral management aide at your local school, a degree in social work online is a perfect choice for you to achieve that goal.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for social workers will grow by 9% over the next decade, adding 64,000 new jobs in the field.

Social work jobs are usually about assisting and supporting families, groups, and individuals as they try to live stable and healthy lives. This is also a program devoted to improving research on oppression, social welfare, human rights, and societal change.

As a bachelor’s degree holder in social work, you can assist licensed professionals through administrative and support services. However, if you want to become a licensed social worker, you will need to pursue a master’s degree in the field.

As a social worker, you can develop community programs, collect data on the efficiency of current community strategies, and even perform administrative duties in health clinics and community centers. Specializations in social work include healthcare, substance abuse, child welfare, and developmental disabilities.

For those unable to join classes on campus, schools that offer distance learning are the best options. Now, students can pursue their social work degree without compromising work and family time.

Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Career Paths

Case Managers: Social services case managers employ rehabilitation services and behavioral support to ensure that clients engage in services, utilize resources, and participate in activities that benefit them. Case managers also set goals, update case files, and suggest and recommend treatment options.

Counselors: A counselor’s primary task is to assess the physical and psychological health of a client. Counselors create, recommend, and review treatment goals as well.

Counselors also assist patients with skills to alter their behaviors and recognize situations that may interfere with the patient’s road to recovery. Counselors can refer clients to other services, resources, and support groups as well.

It is important to note that a master’s degree is required to provide direct clinical care to clients.

Social Workers: Those with a bachelor’s degree in social work usually focus on program developments, policies, and services. They can also suggest community resources like healthcare, childcare, and even food stamps.

These professionals work with individuals or groups, and together, they help patients adjust to challenges and changes like health issues, unemployment, and divorce. Clinical social workers, however, must hold a master’s degree in social work.

Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists: Probation officers assess parolees and those on probation to establish or identify rehabilitation avenues. These specialists interview not only their clients but also their client’s friends and family to check on progress.

Probation officers and correctional treatment specialists also provide resources, maintain case files, write reports, perform drug tests, testify in court, or complete pre-hearing investigations.

Social and Community Service Managers: These managers are equipped to work with the community and its stakeholders in identifying programs and services that would benefit the citizens of a community. With a bachelor of social work degree, graduates become equipped to facilitate outreach activities and draft proposals for social services funding.

Social and community managers also study data to ascertain program efficiencies, and suggest and implement improvements. For some roles in this field, you need to have a master’s degree to practice.

Mental Health Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists: These professionals work with couples, families, and individuals, in providing professional therapeutic care.

To prepare students for these types of occupations that guarantee actual job growth, the online BSW program equips graduates for group or one-on-one counseling, focusing on certain topics like trauma, relational issues, conflict resolution, or grief in a social environment.

But before you are qualified to work in this field that also tackles social justice, you need to have a master’s degree plus complete supervised experience requirements.

Substance Abuse Counselors and Behavioral Disorder Counselors: These counselors work with clients who suffer from drug or alcohol addiction, other types of addictions, or mental health disorders. They provide support and suggest treatment options to help their clients overcome these disorders.

These types of counselors typically work in prisons, community health clinics, counseling offices, or rehabilitation facilities.

Frequently Asked Questions About Social Work Degrees

Why get a bachelor’s in social work?

A bachelor’s degree in social work can help you become an advocate for those who need it most.

How long does it take to get a bachelor’s in social work?

Individuals who pursue this degree can often complete the 120 required credits in about four years.

What will you learn while getting a bachelor’s in social work?

Offered both online and in person, courses challenge students to think critically, work well with others, and practice effective communication skills. Students will study topics like behavioral psychology, social welfare policies, ethics, and addictions. Additionally, many programs include a professional experience component, which helps students gain firsthand knowledge of the field.

What can you do with a bachelor’s in social work?

After completing a bachelor’s degree in social work, students may qualify for careers as case workers, probation officers, and human services assistants.

Learn more about how to major in social work.

How do we determine the best online social work bachelor's degree programs?

Methodology

Pursuing your degree online doesn’t mean you need to settle for an inferior school. Today, most universities and colleges offer online degrees, and many respected schools are seeing significant growth in their numbers of online students.

The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence — i.e., the academic impact of faculty and alumni associated with a school — gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. The combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. For our online degree rankings, we focus on the academic influence of faculty and alumni in the specific disciplines we’re ranking.

If you are serious about finding the best online colleges, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.

How We Picked the Best Bachelor’s in Social Work Online Program

Our ranking method starts with recognizing the school’s accreditation status. Schools that have regionally accredited online bachelor’s degree programs are clear indications that they offer high-quality education.

These online bachelor schools also share tough entry and graduation requirements, thus continuously challenging online students, so they can meet the school’s online academic standards for excellence.

Since these are distance learning formats, the schools on the list have excellent virtual learning platforms that give students the ease of access and technical support they need.

Finally, the degree programs in all the online schools in this list are characterized by intensive coursework and rigorous and comprehensive curricula.

Median Salaries of Similar Careers in the U.S.

The following graph depicts the average salaries of similar occupations to Social and Human Service Assistants in the U.S.

Source: U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

Annual Salary

40460Social and Human Service Assistants

47780Community Health Workers

50510Community and Social Service Specialists, All Other

63290Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists

64930Health Education Specialists

30 Best Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Degree Programs

Online Social Work Programs Looking for You

Online Degree Frequently Asked Questions

If this is your first time taking an online course, the experience may require a time of adjustment. Although you’ll typically learn the same material and take the same exams as your on-campus peers, going online will require greater independence and responsibility than going in person. You’ll be accountable for your own time management, for harnessing the online educational technology that you’ll need to use, and for completing the course requirements, such as listening to lectures, learning lessons, reading texts, and handing in assignments. This means you’ll need to create a suitable workspace for yourself, maintain a realistic schedule, and take the initiative in building relationships with your instructors and classmates. With online college, your goal is to find a balance between independence and engagement.

No. The only part of online education that’s easier than campus-based education is ease of access: all you need is a computer and an internet connection for online education. But even this seeming advantage of online education can be misleading: what’s easier, studying online with your computer and internet connection from your home where you need to cook, clean, pay rent, and maintain a job? Or studying on campus in a dorm where all your living needs are handled by the school, and college staff are there to help you every step of the way?

If you take the commute to campus out of the equation, campus-based education is easier. All the support structures available on campus for students, especially with real people to help you in person, are not there online. The demands on you as an online student will largely be the same as for your campus-based counterpart, but without the same helps.

In general, your online courses will present the same material and test you in the same way as traditional in-person courses. In many cases, you’ll even have the same instructors as your on-campus counterparts. In fact, if you are adjusting to the experience of independent learning with remote educational technology for the first time, online college may be considerably more challenging than campus-based college. For a few insights on how to manage this new online experience, check out our 10 Tips for Adjusting to School Online.

Accreditation is especially important when it comes to online college. This is because the online education landscape is a mix of highly-reputable non-profit institutions on the one end and less-than-reputable for-profit institutions on the other end. Accreditation gives you the power to identify the more reputable actors in online education. Accreditation is a stamp of approval from an independent accrediting agency indicating that a college or university is meeting standards of quality and credibility. School-wide accreditation falls into two major categories: regional and national accreditation. Regional accreditors generally hold jurisdiction only over schools in the states comprising their region, whereas national accreditors hold jurisdiction over schools in all states. Regional accreditation is widely regarded as a more rigorous standard of quality and credibility than national accreditation.

Attending a college or university that is not regionally accredited could limit your opportunities. For students seeking an online education, we strongly recommend that they opt for regionally accredited schools. Regional accreditation ensures eligibility for federal loans and grants, ensures your college credits can be transferred between schools, and ensures that your degree credits can be accepted if you wish to earn an advanced degree. For more on this important topic, check out our What is Accreditation and Why Does It Matter? College & University Accreditation Guide.

As long as your online college degree is regionally accredited (see the previous point), you should have little difficulty transferring most of your credits or credentials to another regionally accredited undergraduate school. Every school carries its own standards and procedures for granting a transfer of credits. In many cases, you will encounter some bureaucratic haggling in which some of your credits will be transferred and others may be refused. However, provided that you have attended an online school with recognized regional accreditation, you should be in good shape in transferring your credits earned online.

In most cases, as long you graduate from a well-regarded, regionally-accredited online college, prospective employers won’t look sideways at your degree. In fact, unless you attend an exclusively online college or university, there will likely be no specific indicator on your degree, transcript, or resumé differentiating your school from its brick-and-mortar counterpart. This means that your employer will likely only differentiate between an online and in-person degree if you mention this distinction.

Some employers may express the concern that because you did your degree online, you may need to transition from an online education experience to in-person workplace experience. But in an age of Covid, that concern seems much diminished. The fact is that much employment these days is remote. And collaboration increasingly happens online over Zoom. Many employers will therefore view your online degree as evidence of valuable 21st century professional skills such as independence, self-motivation, time management, and tech savvy.

If you are a student who thrives on the dynamic energy of in-person discussion, who requires the physical surroundings of a classroom to feel engaged, or who considers the social aspects of education to be of equal importance to the actual content of your courses, online education will be less than ideal for you (though depending on your circumstances, it may also be the only viable option).

While there is much in traditional campus-based education that can be substituted or simulated through the online medium, some students may find that there is nothing that can replace the conversation, collaboration, and motivation that occur in an actual in-person classroom setting. As you transition to online education, one of the biggest challenges you will likely face in getting the most out of your online classes is overcoming this difference between “real reality” and “virtual reality.” Fortunately, we’ve got some great Tips for Online Education Beginners.

The advantages of online classes are many. Above all, online courses give you the freedom and flexibility to attend class from anywhere that works for you, whether you’re at home, in a coffee shop, or in a quiet conference room at work. In many cases, you’ll also enjoy the convenience of asynchronous learning opportunities-educational experiences that you can complete at your own pace and on your own schedule. This may include pre-taped lectures, ongoing chat-board discussions, and 24/7 access to digital materials. And of course, just as there are some learners who prefer the energy of a live classroom, there are those who learn best when working in their own personal space, free from distractions. If this sounds like you, you might find the solitude of online learning to be a major advantage.

Whether you’re just getting started on your college search, you’re looking for survival tips on your way to a bachelor’s degree, or you’re preparing for the transition into grad school, we’ve got guides, how to’s and tons of other valuable resources to keep you moving forward in your educational journey.

Best Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Degree Programs Ranked for 2023

The Top 10 Online Bachelor's in Social Work Degrees

Key Takeaways

Featured Programs

Navigating the Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Program

Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Career Paths

Frequently Asked Questions About Social Work Degrees

Why get a bachelor’s in social work?

How long does it take to get a bachelor’s in social work?

What will you learn while getting a bachelor’s in social work?

What can you do with a bachelor’s in social work?

How We Picked the Best Bachelor’s in Social Work Online Program

Median Salaries of Similar Careers in the U.S.

30 Best Online Bachelor’s in Social Work Degree Programs

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Online Social Work Programs Looking for You

Online Degree Frequently Asked Questions

What can I expect from an online college course?+

Is online college easier than campus-based college?+

Why does accreditation matter in online college?+

Will I be able to transfer my online college degree?+

Will employers respect my online degree?+

What are the disadvantages of online classes?+

What are the advantages of online classes?+

Resources for Online College-Bound Students

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