Accounting is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #13 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 14 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in Wisconsin ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 399 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. 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 take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges 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
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 schools for accounting students working on their associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in Wisconsin ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It is hard to beat Gateway Technical College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in accounting. Gateway Technical College is a large public college located in the small city of Kenosha.
After graduation, accounting associate recipients typically make about $42,427 in the first five years of their career.
Any student who is interested in an associate degree in accounting needs to look into Madison Area Technical College. Madison College is a fairly large public college located in the city of Madison.
Those accounting students who get their associate degree from Madison Area Technical College receive $4,672 more than the typical accounting student.
Any student who is interested in an associate degree in accounting has to take a look at Fox Valley Technical College. Located in the midsize suburb of Appleton, FVTC is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the accounting program report average early career wages of $41,261.
Northcentral Technical College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in accounting. Located in the small city of Wausau, North Central Technical College is a public college with a medium-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the accounting program state that they receive average early career wages of $30,573.
Western Technical College is a small public college located in the small city of La Crosse.
Accounting associate degree recipients from Western Technical College earn a boost of approximately $2,071 above the typical earnings of accounting majors.
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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
