The Doctoral Program Guide is designed to provide timely and useful information about doctoral programs in Communication for students, prospective students, and other interested parties.

 

Which Programs Are Listed?

This guide includes many doctoral programs, all offering a Ph.D. degree in some area or field of Communication. We began with the programs that have traditionally been ranked or evaluated as doctoral programs in Communication by other sources and added several new programs.

For doctoral programs in related areas of study, visit the following:

 

Submit Program Updates

What Information Can Be Found in the Guide?

All information presented in this guide is publicly available on the individual department or program website and/or in other published sources. Each university is identified by its Carnegie Classification, its membership in the Association of American Universities, and by the number of doctorates it has conferred from 2010 to 2019, according to the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates. The guide provides each program’s areas of study, the program’s admissions requirements, a listing of each program’s graduate faculty, and contact information. In addition, we also recognize a program’s recipients of NCA Awards from 2000 to the present and synthesize and report on the programs’ standing in a series of different rankings/ratings, including:

The university’s 2019 ranking in the Communication & Media Studies category of the QS World University Rankings. (Note: this ranking includes 200 universities; the first 50 are individually ranked, followed by category rankings for the remainder.)

The university’s ranking in the “Language, Communication, and Culture” category of the University Ranking by Academic Performance measure.

Areas of Study

Most doctoral programs in Communication indicate research areas or special research concentrations. Such areas are usually based on the types of research conducted by the program’s faculty members and the courses offered toward the graduate degree.

A program is listed within a specific research area based entirely upon its self-identification of research focus. Because the identification and labeling of research foci vary greatly across programs, this list groups and categorizes research areas according to commonly understood labels. Thus, a given doctoral program may identify its research specialty as “media economics,” “media studies,” or “media effects.” That program would be included in the broader category below of “Mass Communication/Media Studies.

Questions that Prospective Doctoral Students Should Ask Program Directors 

  1. What is your job placement rate of your PhD graduates? How many have academic or other professional positions within one year of graduation?
  2. Can you tell me how many are pursuing academic careers and how many are pursuing other careers?
  3. Do you have any information about starting salaries?
  4. How long, on average, does the average full-time student take to complete the degree?
  5. How long, on average, does the average part-time student take to complete the degree?
  6. What percentage of PhD students finish the program in six years? 10 years?
  7. What is the admission rate and how is that calculated?
  8. How does your department typically respond to allegations of misconduct, academic or otherwise?

Doctoral Program Guide Updates

If you are a representative of a Doctoral Program you may update your institution’s information with NCA by using the form below.
Max. file size: 2 GB.
Note. For any of the fields below that you would like to update, please include all text that you would like to appear on the page, not just the updated information. Thank you!
Consent(Required)