If you plan on getting your doctor's degree in anthropology, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #50 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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Anthropology Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 82 doctor's degrees in anthropology to qualified students.
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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 many resources a school devotes to anthropology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other anthropology 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 anthropology 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 anthropology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for anthropology students working on their doctor's degree.
The anthropology 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 Anthropology Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region.
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University of Florida is one of the best schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in anthropology. UF is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Gainesville.
Doctorate students who receive their degree from the anthropology program earn around $51,319 in the first couple years of their career.
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).
