Ranked #14 in popularity, general education is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for general education students pursuing a doctor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 44 doctor's degrees in general education to qualified students.
Choosing a Great General Education School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of general education for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education 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 account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor'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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on general education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general education students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
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 easy is it for general education to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general education students working on their doctor's degree.
The education school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best General Education Doctor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study General Education in Pennsylvania
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a doctor's degree in general education.
Top Pennsylvania Schools for a Doctorate in Education
University of Pennsylvania is a great option for students pursuing a doctor's degree in general education. UPenn is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Philadelphia.
Those general education students who get their doctor's degree from University of Pennsylvania make $13,188 more than the typical education student.
University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Campus is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in general education. Pitt is a very large public university located in the city of Pittsburgh.
Doctorate recipients from the general education degree program at University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Campus make $3,096 more than the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
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).