If you pursue a doctor's degree in general education, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #14 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 31 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for general education students pursuing a doctor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 2,501 doctor's degrees in general education to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Education School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of general education for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on general education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general education students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for general education 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 general education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general education students working on their doctor's degree.
The education school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best General Education Doctor's Degree Schools.
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It is hard to beat Purdue University - Main Campus if you wish to pursue a doctor's degree in general education. Located in the small city of West Lafayette, Purdue is a public university with a very large student population.
Doctorate students who receive their degree from the education program make about $82,750 for their early career.
It is difficult to beat Azusa Pacific University if you want to pursue a doctor's degree in general education. Located in the suburb of Azusa, Azusa Pacific is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
General Education doctor's degree recipients from Azusa Pacific University receive an earnings boost of about $9,854 over the typical earnings of general education graduates.
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 general education for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
