Music is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #34 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 7 schools in Kentucky to determine which ones were the best for music students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 214 bachelor's degrees in music during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Choosing a Great Music School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The music 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges 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.
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 much a school focuses on music students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of music 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 music 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 music related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for music students working on their bachelor's degree.
The music 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 Music Bachelor's Degree Schools in Kentucky.
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.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "visual-and-performing-arts//music"
Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
University of Kentucky is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in music. Located in the large city of Lexington, UK is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the music program make around $17,040 in the first couple years of working.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in music has to check out University of Louisville. UofL is a very large public university located in the city of Louisville.
Soon after graduating, music bachelor's recipients typically make an average of $20,125 in their early careers.
It is hard to beat Western Kentucky University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in music. WKU is a large public university located in the small city of Bowling Green.
Bachelor's recipients from the music major at Western Kentucky University get $5,959 above the typical graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Murray State University is a great decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in music. Murray State is a medium-sized public university located in the distant town of Murray.
Music bachelor's degree recipients from Murray State University earn a boost of approximately $5,291 above the average income of music graduates.
Morehead State University is a moderately-sized public university located in the town of Morehead.
Music bachelor's degree recipients from Morehead State University get an earnings boost of approximately $2,281 above the average earnings of music 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.
The music 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:
