2025 Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region
4Colleges in the Rocky Mountains Region
234Parks & Rec Degrees Awarded
If you plan on majoring in parks, recreation & leisure studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #218 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in the Rocky Mountains Region to determine which ones were the best for parks, recreation & leisure studies students pursuing a degree. Combined, these schools handed out 234 degrees in parks, recreation & leisure studies to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies School
The parks & rec program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies rankings. For our Best Overall Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies School rankings, we roll up the results of our degree-level rankings, weighted by the number of degrees awarded at that level.
You may want to choose one of the degree levels below to find the schools of most interest to you.
Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Rankings by Degree Level
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region list to help you make the college decision.
If you'd like to restrict your choices to just one part of the country, you can filter this list by location.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
Best Schools for Parks, Recreation & Leisure Studies in the Rocky Mountains Region
The schools below may not offer all types of parks & rec degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer.
Every student who is interested in parks, recreation & leisure studies needs to check out University of Utah. U of U is a very large public university located in the city of Salt Lake City. A Best Colleges rank of #213 out of 2,152 schools nationwide means U of U is a great university overall.
There were about 42 parks, recreation & leisure studies students who graduated with this degree at U of U in the most recent data year.
Every student who is interested in parks, recreation & leisure studies has to check out Brigham Young University - Provo. BYU is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Provo. A Best Colleges rank of #257 out of 2,152 colleges nationwide means BYU is a great university overall.
There were roughly 105 parks, recreation & leisure studies students who graduated with this degree at BYU in the most recent data year.
Any student pursuing a degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies has to look into Western Colorado University. Western is a small public university located in the remote town of Gunnison. This university ranks 29th out of 31 schools for overall quality in the state of Colorado.
There were about 20 parks, recreation & leisure studies students who graduated with this degree at Western in the most recent year we have data available.
Southern Utah University is a good choice for students interested in a degree in parks, recreation & leisure studies. Southern Utah University is a fairly large public university located in the remote town of Cedar City. This university ranks 9th out of 11 schools for overall quality in the state of Utah.
There were about 21 parks, recreation & leisure studies students who graduated with this degree at Southern Utah University in the most recent year we have data available.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
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).