a doctor's degree in theology & religious vocations is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #12 out of 36 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Theology & Religious Vocations Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 324 doctor's degrees in theology & religious vocations during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 theology & religious vocations students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other theology & religious vocations 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 much debt theology & religious vocations 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 theology & religious vocations related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for theology & religious vocations students working on their doctor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Theology & Religious Vocations Schools
The theology & religious vocations 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 Theology & Religious Vocations Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
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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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
