If you plan on getting your master's degree in drama & theater arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #83 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.
College Factual looked at 5 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 123 master'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 Master's Degree
Your choice of drama & theater arts for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a master'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 for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different 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 master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master'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 drama & theater arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other drama & theater arts students want to attend this school to pursue a master'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 easy is it for drama & theater arts to pay back their student loans after receiving their master'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 master'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 Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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The University of Texas at Austin is a good decision for students pursuing a master's degree in drama & theater arts. UT Austin is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the theater program earn about $43,430 in the first couple years of working.
It is hard to beat University of Houston if you wish to pursue a master's degree in drama & theater arts. UH is a fairly large public university located in the city of Houston.
Master's recipients from the drama & theater arts major at University of Houston get $8,942 above the standard graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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).
Your choice of drama & theater arts for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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