Best Education Degrees, the leading guide to educational careers and colleges, has published its ranking of the 35 Top Bachelor's in Early Childhood Education Degrees for 2017.

Early childhood education sets the stage for a young child's life. It influences their emotional, physical, social, spiritual, and mental development, and thus the importance of early childhood educators cannot be downplayed. The emotional, physical, and mental effort to teach the young requires robust training and moral perseverance.

"With increasing demand for quality teachers, coupled with research findings on the importance of early childhood development, universities are striving to meet the challenge," Nick Plato, editor of Best Education Degrees, said. "This ranking takes stock of these efforts on the part of universities to train early childhood educators, and provides a roadmap for prospective students interested in the field."

Best Education Degrees employs a robust ranking methodology based on a wide variety of reputed and reliable statistics. Three general criteria are used: a school's reputation score, calculated using selected categories of statistics from publicly available sources such as U.S. News & World Report, the National Center for Education Statistics, and college websites; an affordability rating using net price calculators and an average early-career salary (from payscale.com); and specific program ratings from the National Council for Teacher Quality 2016 ranking.

In first place in the ranking for the 35 Top Bachelor's in Early Childhood Education Degrees sits University of Wisconsin – Madison, Purdue University takes second, and University of Georgia takes third.

This is the complete list of schools appearing on the ranking:

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Purdue University

University of Georgia

University of Nebraska

University of Florida

The University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign

Arizona State University

Brigham Young University

University of North—Carolina Chapel Hill

Pennsylvania State University

Indiana University - Bloomington

The University of Texas - Austin

Miami University

University of Missouri - Columbia

University of Arizona

University of Cincinnati

Wilmington University

Florida State College at Jacksonville

New York University

University of Washington

Vanderbilt University

University of Dayton

University of Vermont

University of Michigan - Flint

University of Oregon

Ohio State University

University of Delaware

Ferris State University

Bucknell University

University of Massachusetts -Amherst

Clemson University

Park University

Northern Arizona University

Texas Christian University

CUNY Hunter