Ranked #6 in popularity, educational administration is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 28 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Educational Administration Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 931 doctor's degrees in educational administration to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Educational Administration School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of educational administration for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education admin program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a good 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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 educational administration students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other educational administration students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
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 easy is it for educational administration to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized educational administration related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for educational administration students working on their doctor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Educational Administration Schools
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 Educational Administration Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Concordia University, Chicago is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in educational administration. Concordia University, Chicago is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of River Forest.
Educational Administration doctor's degree recipients from Concordia University, Chicago get an earnings boost of around $13,713 above the average earnings of educational administration graduates.
Illinois State University is a good decision for individuals pursuing a doctor's degree in educational administration. Located in the suburb of Normal, Illinois State is a public university with a very large student population.
Those educational administration students who get their doctor's degree from Illinois State University receive $11,174 more than the standard education admin graduate.
Located in the city of Chicago, NLU is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Those educational administration students who get their doctor's degree from National Louis University receive $6,668 more than the typical education admin grad.
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).
Your choice of educational administration for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education admin program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
