Merging these two distinctive fields provides students access to a wide range of focus areas, from art museum education to social justice in education to arts policy explorations. Most graduates of the PhD program become faculty scholars at universities, while some also pursue advanced leadership opportunities within the arts disciplines.

The PhD program gives students the opportunity to achieve a high level of scholarly competence and to develop the capacity to contribute to the field. It consists of a set of required foundational courses, a cohesive collection of courses and other educational experiences oriented to a particular aspect of the field, candidacy examination, a dissertation and a final oral examination. Students have five years to complete the PhD requirements after passing the candidacy examination. The program is an 80 semester hour program, 30 hours of which may be transferred from a student's master's degree.