a master's degree in fine & studio arts is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #58 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 7 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Fine & Studio Arts Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 201 master's degrees in fine & studio arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Fine & Studio Arts School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of fine & studio arts for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality fine arts 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
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different 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 fine & studio arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other fine & studio 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 fine & studio 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 fine & studio arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for fine & studio arts students working on their master's degree.
The fine arts school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Fine & Studio Arts Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in fine & studio arts has to look into University of Iowa. Located in the city of Iowa City, Iowa is a public university with a fairly large student population.
After graduating, fine arts master's recipients generally make an average of $31,765 at the beginning of their careers.
Minneapolis College of Art and Design is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing a master's degree in fine & studio arts. Located in the city of Minneapolis, MCAD is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the fine arts program state that they receive average early career income of $24,218.
Lindenwood University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in fine & studio arts. Located in the small city of Saint Charles, Lindenwood University is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.More information about a master’s in fine & studio arts from Lindenwood University
Located in the distant town of Kearney, UNK is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Master's recipients from the fine & studio arts major at University of Nebraska at Kearney get $20,322 above the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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).