If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #38 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 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Drama & Theater Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in North Carolina ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 442 bachelor's degrees in drama & theater arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Drama & Theater Arts School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of drama & theater arts for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality theater 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 make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on drama & theater arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other drama & theater arts students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for drama & theater arts to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized drama & theater arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for drama & theater arts students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Drama & Theater Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in North Carolina list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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University of North Carolina School of the Arts is a good option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts. UNCSA is a small public university located in the large city of Winston Salem.
After graduation, theater bachelor's recipients generally make around $21,229 in the first five years of their career.
Elon University is a wonderful choice for students interested in a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts. Located in the midsize suburb of Elon, Elon is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Those drama & theater arts students who get their bachelor's degree from Elon University earn $3,039 more than the standard theater graduate.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts needs to check out University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UNC Chapel Hill is a very large public university located in the city of Chapel Hill.
Bachelor's recipients from the drama & theater arts degree program at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill get $5,151 above the typical college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts. UNC Greensboro is a large public university located in the city of Greensboro.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the theater program report average early career earnings of $18,154.
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).