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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Education Doctor's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 224 doctor's degrees in general education during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great General Education School for Your Doctor's Degree
The education doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Doctor'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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to general education students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general education students who choose to seek a doctor'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 general education 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 general education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general education students working on their doctor'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 General Education Doctor's Degree Schools in Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study General Education in Virginia
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a doctor's degree in general education.
Virginia Commonwealth University is a wonderful option for individuals pursuing a doctor's degree in general education. Located in the medium-sized city of Richmond, VCU is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduating, education doctorate recipients usually make an average of $79,584 in the first five years of their career.
George Mason University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in general education. GMU is a very large public university located in the suburb of Fairfax.
General Education doctor's degree recipients from George Mason University receive an earnings boost of about $9,441 over the typical income of general education graduates.
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).
The education doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
