a master's degree in drama & theater arts is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #83 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in the New England Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 113 master's degrees in drama & theater arts during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Choosing a Great Drama & Theater Arts School for Your Master's Degree
The theater master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality theater program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master'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 drama & theater arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of drama & theater arts 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 drama & theater arts 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 drama & theater arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for drama & theater arts 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 Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in the New England Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Drama & Theater Arts in the New England Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in drama & theater arts.
Top New England Region Schools for a Master's in Theater
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in drama & theater arts needs to take a look at Emerson College. Located in the city of Boston, Emerson is a private not-for-profit college with a medium-sized student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the theater program earn around $39,309 in the first couple years of their career.
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).