2025 Best Documentary Production Schools in California

You'll be studying one of the lesser sought-after majors if you pursue a degree in documentary production. It is ranked #1106 out of 1506 major degree programs in terms of popularity. As such, your educational options may be more limited than if you were in a more popular field.

College Factual reviewed 2 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for degree seekers in the field of documentary production. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 21 degrees in documentary production annually.

Jump to one of the following sections: * Degree-Level Rankings

• Best Overall Documentary Production Schools List

Pick Your Documentary Production Degree Level

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 Documentary Production Schools in California list to help you make the college decision. You can also filter this list by location to find schools closer to you.

In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you. When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.

More information on how we come up with our rankings can be found here: College Factual's Data Methodology.

Best Schools for Documentary Production in California

The schools below may not offer all types of documentary production degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer.

Top California Schools in Documentary Production

1

Chapman University
Orange, CA

Master's Degree Highest Degree Type

It is hard to beat Chapman University if you want to pursue a degree in documentary production. Chapman is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Orange.More information about a degree in documentary production from Chapman University

2

University of California - Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA

Master's Degree Highest Degree Type

University of California - Santa Cruz is a wonderful decision for students pursuing a degree in documentary production. UC Santa Cruz is a large public university located in the city of Santa Cruz.More information about a degree in documentary production from University of California - Santa Cruz

Best Documentary Production Colleges in the Far Western US Region

Explore all the Best Documentary Production Colleges in the Far Western US Area or other specific states within that region.

State	Colleges	Degrees Awarded

View All Rankings >

Documentary Production Related Rankings by Major

Documentary Production is one of 4 different types of Film, Video & Photographic Arts programs to choose from.

Most Popular Majors Related to Documentary Production

Related Major	Annual Graduates
Film & Video Production	2,143
Film/Cinema/Media Studies	1,678
Photography	326
Other Film/Video & Photographic Arts	311

View All Documentary Production Related Majors >

Notes and References

• 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).

More about our data sources and methodologies.