Drama & Theater Arts is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #38 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 28 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Drama & Theater Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,041 bachelor's degrees in drama & theater arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Drama & Theater Arts School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The theater bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include 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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor'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
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 drama & theater arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of drama & theater arts students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 drama & theater 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 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 bachelor'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 Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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It is hard to beat The University of Texas at Austin if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts. UT Austin is a very large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Those drama & theater arts students who get their bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Austin earn $9,590 more than the average theater graduate.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts needs to take a look at Texas State University. Texas State is a very large public university located in the city of San Marcos.
Those drama & theater arts students who get their bachelor's degree from Texas State University make $2,374 more than the standard theater graduate.
University of Arizona is a great decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts. University of Arizona is a very large public university located in the city of Tucson.
Bachelor's recipients from the drama & theater arts program at University of Arizona earn $2,377 more than the standard college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
It is difficult to beat Texas Christian University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in drama & theater arts. TCU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Fort Worth.
After graduating, theater bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $21,221 at the beginning of their careers.
University of Oklahoma is a very large public university located in the medium-sized suburb of Norman.
Those drama & theater arts students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Oklahoma Norman Campus earn $3,082 more than the average theater grad.
Located in the city of Lubbock, Texas Tech is a public university with a very large student population.
Drama & Theater Arts bachelor's degree recipients from Texas Tech University receive an earnings boost of about $5,262 over the typical earnings of drama & theater arts majors.
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 bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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