Ranked #13 in popularity, accounting is one of the most sought-after associate degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 44 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,910 associate degrees in accounting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of accounting for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality accounting program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their associate degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their associate degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 accounting students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other accounting students want to attend this school to pursue a associate 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 accounting to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized accounting related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for accounting students working on their associate degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Indiana Wesleyan University - National & Global is a great choice for individuals pursuing an associate degree in accounting. IWU is a large private not-for-profit university located in the rural area of Marion.
Associate recipients from the accounting program at Indiana Wesleyan University - National & Global get $12,665 more than the typical college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Gateway Technical College is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing an associate degree in accounting. Gateway Technical College is a fairly large public college located in the small city of Kenosha.
Those accounting students who get their associate degree from Gateway Technical College receive $2,516 more than the typical accounting student.
Madison Area Technical College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in accounting. Madison College is a large public college located in the city of Madison.
Those accounting students who get their associate degree from Madison Area Technical College earn $5,422 more than the average accounting graduate.
It's hard to beat Ivy Tech Community College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in accounting. Ivy Tech Community College is a fairly large public college located in the city of Indianapolis.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the accounting program make around $36,241 for their early career.
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).
Your choice of accounting for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality accounting program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
