If you plan on getting your doctor's degree in
visual & performing arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #14 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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 5 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Visual & Performing Arts Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 194 doctor's degrees in visual & performing arts during the 2021-2022 academic year.
What's on this page: * Our Methodology
Your choice of visual & performing arts for getting your doctor's degree school matters. 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 school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of various 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 many resources a school devotes to visual & performing arts students as compared to other majors.
- Major Demand - The number of visual & performing arts 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 much debt visual & performing arts 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 visual & performing arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for visual & performing arts students working on their doctor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Visual & Performing Arts Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.