If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in
visual & performing arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #9 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 5 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Visual & Performing Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 953 bachelor's degrees in visual & performing arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Jump to one of the following sections: * Our Methodology
Your choice of visual & performing arts for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality visual & performing arts program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 visual & performing arts students vs. other majors.
- Major Demand - The number of visual & performing arts students who choose to seek a bachelor'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 visual & performing arts students go into to obtain their bachelor'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 schools for visual & performing arts students working on their bachelor's degree.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Visual & Performing Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in Iowa ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.