Behavioral Science Programs in the US: A Checked List of 79 Degrees and Certificates

“Behavioral science” on a US program page can mean four different things. This list sorts 79 programs by degree level and tags each with its focus, so you can see which meaning you are looking at before you read a curriculum. It is a starting list for your own research, not a ranking. I do not rank programs here, because I have no outcome data that would support one.

As of October 2026: every entry was read on the institution’s own page on 21 October 2026. Programs change names, close and reopen, and admissions rules change every cycle, so confirm everything on the linked page before you apply. Tuition and deadlines are left out on purpose, since they go stale fastest.

What counts as behavioral science here

The label covers four audiences that overlap less than the names suggest.

• Decision science and behavioral economics. Experiments on judgment and choice, usually housed in business schools, economics or psychology departments. If you came from what behavioural science is, this is probably the field you mean. For the UK and Europe, see MSc programmes compared.
• General behavioral science. Interdisciplinary bachelor’s degrees that blend psychology, sociology and anthropology. They are broad and usually career-oriented toward human services, not toward running experiments.
• Behavior analysis. Applied behavior analysis, a different tradition from the one this site covers. It is listed so you can recognise it, not because it is the same field.
• Public health. Health behavior and social and behavioral sciences programs inside schools of public health. They study behavior change in populations.

The “Focus” column uses these four tags. The tag is my reading of the program name and department, so treat it as a guide to search with, not as an official classification.

How I built the list

The programs were collected in a research pass on 21 October 2026 that searched by program name and department and recorded the degree, delivery format and URL from each institution’s official page. Only programs with an official page are included, with one exception marked in the tables. A program missing from the list may exist; this is not a complete census of US higher education. State is a column, not a page, because a program’s location matters less than its content and format.

Nine of the links belong to sites that block automated requests or redirect, so I have not re-checked that those URLs still load today. If one is dead, the institution’s name plus the program title will find it.

How to read the tables

Delivery is as stated on the program page: on-campus, online or hybrid. Where the page does not say, the cell reads “not stated”. Several institutions appear more than once because they run separate programs at different levels, such as the University of Kansas and Duke.

Before you apply, ask each program three questions. Does it require experimental design and statistics beyond the basics? Does the final project involve collecting original data? And where have its graduates worked? The last answer is rarely on the program page, so email the admissions office.

Master’s (14)

PhD (17)

Bachelor’s (30)

Certificates (15)

Associate and add-on options (3)

Corrections

If a program on this list has changed, closed or been renamed, tell me through the contact page and I will update the entry.