If you pursue a doctor's degree in music, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #22 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 5 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for doctor's degree seekers in the field of music. Combined, these schools handed out 181 doctor's degrees in music to qualified students.
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 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 doctorate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their doctor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 colleges for music students working on their doctor'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 Music Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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.
The University of Texas at Austin is a wonderful decision for students pursuing a doctor's degree in music. UT Austin is a fairly large public university located in the city of Austin.
Students who graduate with their doctorate from the music program report average early career wages of $35,068.
University of North Texas is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in music. UNT is a fairly large public university located in the city of Denton.
Music doctor's degree recipients from University of North Texas earn a boost of approximately $5,955 over the average earnings of music majors.
It is hard to beat Arizona State University - Tempe if you want to pursue a doctor's degree in music. Located in the medium-sized city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduation, music doctorate recipients generally earn an average of $36,051 at the beginning of their careers.
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
