If you plan on getting your master's degree in music, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #36 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual reviewed 5 schools in Tennessee to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of music. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 92 master'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 Master's Degree
The music master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality music program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to music students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of music students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt music students go into to obtain their master'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 full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for music 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 Music Master's Degree Schools in Tennessee 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.
Belmont University is a good option for students pursuing a master's degree in music. Belmont is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Nashville.
After graduating, music master's recipients usually earn an average of $31,018 in their early careers.
The University of Tennessee - Knoxville is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in music. Located in the medium-sized city of Knoxville, UT Knoxville is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the music program state that they receive average early career wages of $34,198.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in music needs to look into University of Memphis. UofM is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Memphis.
Master's recipients from the music degree program at University of Memphis make $9,873 more than the typical 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.