If you plan on getting your doctor's degree in computer & information sciences, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #11 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.
College Factual looked at 5 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Computer & Information Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 157 doctor's degrees in computer & information sciences to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Computer & Information Sciences School for Your Doctor's Degree
The computer & information sciences doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality computer & information sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of doctorate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their doctor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to computer & information sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of computer & information sciences students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt computer & information sciences students go into to obtain their doctor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized computer & information sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for computer & information sciences students working on their doctor's degree.
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 Computer & Information Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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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).
The computer & information sciences doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality computer & information sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
