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 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 393 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. 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 master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host 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 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
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 colleges 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 Southeast Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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It's difficult to beat Savannah College of Art and Design if you wish to pursue a master's degree in drama & theater arts. Located in the medium-sized city of Savannah, SCAD is a private not-for-profit college with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the theater program report average early career income of $26,106.
It's difficult to beat Florida State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in drama & theater arts. Florida State is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Tallahassee.
Soon after graduation, theater master's recipients generally make around $32,286 at the beginning of their careers.
University of Florida is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in drama & theater arts. UF is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Gainesville.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the theater program earn about $34,588 for their early career.
University of North Carolina School of the Arts is a great decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in drama & theater arts. Located in the large city of Winston Salem, UNCSA is a public university with a small student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the theater program earn around $27,611 in their early career salary.
Located in the large suburb of Orlando, UCF is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those drama & theater arts students who get their master's degree from University of Central Florida receive $17,367 more than the standard theater grad.
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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