Drama & Theater Arts is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #83 most popular master's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 211 master's degrees in drama & theater arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Drama & Theater Arts School for Your Master's Degree
The theater master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality theater 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 make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 - The number of drama & theater arts students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 much debt drama & theater arts students go into to obtain their master'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 drama & theater arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for drama & theater arts students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Northwestern University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in drama & theater arts. Northwestern is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Evanston.
Soon after graduating, theater master's recipients usually earn an average of $25,804 in their early careers.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in drama & theater arts has to look into DePaul University. Located in the city of Chicago, DePaul is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the theater program state that they receive average early career wages of $25,163.
It is difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you want to pursue a master's degree in drama & theater arts. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, theater master's recipients usually make an average of $26,539 in the first five years of their career.
Wayne State is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Detroit.
Drama & Theater Arts master's degree recipients from Wayne State University earn a boost of approximately $5,364 above the average income of drama & theater arts graduates.
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 theater master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality theater program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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