2024 Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Doctor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region
4Colleges in the Plains States Region
11Doctor's Degrees
Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studiesdoctorate programs are on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of popularity. In fact, the major degree program ranks #23 out of the 36 majors we look at each year. This may make is a little harder to find a school that is a good fit for you.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2024 Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Doctor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 11 doctor's degrees in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies School for Your Doctor's Degree
The parks & rec doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality parks & rec 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
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Doctor'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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students who choose to seek a doctor'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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students go into to obtain their doctor'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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies 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 Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Doctor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies in the Plains States Region
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students seeking a a doctor's degree.
Top Plains States Region Schools for a Doctorate in Parks & Rec
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).