Design & Applied Arts is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #27 most popular major 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 7 schools in Tennessee to determine which ones were the best for design & applied arts students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 231 bachelor's degrees in design & applied arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Translate your creative ideas through concept, design and digital media with a bachelor's in graphic design online from Southern New Hampshire University.
Take the first step toward a career of visual expression and doing what you love with this online associate degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Learn to create a striking portfolio and hone the skills you need to succeed in the world of professional photography with this online digital photography degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Choosing a Great Design & Applied Arts School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of design & applied arts for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality design 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
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor'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 design & applied arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other design & applied arts students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor'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 design & applied arts students go into to obtain their bachelor'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 design & applied arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for design & applied arts students working on their bachelor's degree.
The design 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 Design & Applied Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in Tennessee.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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Translate your creative ideas through concept, design and digital media with a bachelor's in graphic design online from Southern New Hampshire University.
Learn to create a striking portfolio and hone the skills you need to succeed in the world of professional photography with this online digital photography degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Get on the right path to the fast-paced, exciting world of video game art and design with this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Belmont University is a wonderful option for students interested in a bachelor's degree in design & applied arts. Located in the large city of Nashville, Belmont is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the design program earn about $28,702 in the first couple years of working.
It is hard to beat The University of Tennessee - Knoxville if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in design & applied arts. UT Knoxville is a fairly large public university located in the city of Knoxville.
Bachelor's recipients from the design & applied arts degree program at The University of Tennessee - Knoxville make $5,712 above the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
It's hard to beat The University of Tennessee - Chattanooga if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in design & applied arts. UT Chattanooga is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Chattanooga.
Those design & applied arts students who get their bachelor's degree from The University of Tennessee - Chattanooga make $11,619 more than the typical design student.
Located in the city of Murfreesboro, Middle Tennessee State University is a public university with a very large student population.
Design & Applied Arts bachelor's degree recipients from Middle Tennessee State University earn a boost of around $8,458 over the average earnings of design & applied arts majors.
ETSU is a fairly large public university located in the city of Johnson City.
Bachelor's recipients from the design & applied arts program at East Tennessee State University make $3,828 above the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Gain a solid grounding in your online web design classes and exercise your creative muscle with this specialized online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Go beyond traditional software development to gain the technical expertise required to succeed in an exciting and competitive field with this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
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.
Your choice of design & applied arts for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality design program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
