Music is of the hottest doctor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #22 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 10 schools in the Southeast Region to determine which ones were the best for music students pursuing a doctor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 289 doctor'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 Doctor's Degree
The music doctor'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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor'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 much a school focuses on music students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of music students who choose to seek a doctor'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 easy is it for music to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
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 doctor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Music Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Any student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in music has to look into University of Miami. Located in the large suburb of Coral Gables, U Miami is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Soon after graduation, music doctorate recipients generally earn an average of $30,859 in the first five years of their career.
University of South Carolina - Columbia is a great decision for students interested in a doctor's degree in music. Located in the midsize city of Columbia, UofSC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Doctorate recipients from the music program at University of South Carolina - Columbia get $7,148 above the standard college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Florida State University is a great choice for students pursuing a doctor's degree in music. Florida State is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Tallahassee.
Doctorate students who receive their degree from the music program earn an average of $33,487 in the first couple years of working.
It is difficult to beat University of Kentucky if you wish to pursue a doctor's degree in music. Located in the large city of Lexington, UK is a public university with a very large student population.
Music doctor's degree recipients from University of Kentucky get an earnings boost of about $7,746 above the typical earnings of music graduates.
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 doctor'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:
