Ranked #30 in popularity, communication sciences 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 14 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Communication Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 240 doctor's degrees in communication sciences during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Communication Sciences School for Your Doctor's Degree
The communication sciences doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality communication sciences 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
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 include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to communication sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of communication sciences students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
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 communication sciences 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 communication sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for communication 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 Communication Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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It is hard to beat Northwestern University if you want to pursue a doctor's degree in communication sciences. Located in the small city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Communication Sciences doctor's degree recipients from Northwestern University get an earnings boost of around $7,548 over the typical earnings of communication sciences majors.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in communication sciences. Located in the large city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a very large student population.
Doctorate students who receive their degree from the communication sciences program earn an average of $64,841 for their early career.
Rush University is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Chicago.
Those communication sciences students who get their doctor's degree from Rush University receive $6,300 more than the average communication sciences 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).
The communication sciences doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality communication sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
