If you pursue a associate degree in accounting, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #13 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in the Rocky Mountains Region to determine which ones were the best for accounting students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 445 associate degrees in accounting to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA - Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA - Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Accounting (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Accounting (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Accounting" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "AS in Accounting" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "AS in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA in Accounting" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Accounting" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA - Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA - Forensic Accounting (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Accounting" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Accounting" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 13
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 8 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 8
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 5 offers with relevance >= 1.0
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their associate degree from the school. After all, your associate 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
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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for accounting students working on their associate degree.
The accounting school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "business-management-marketing-sales//accounting"
It's hard to beat Front Range Community College if you want to pursue an associate degree in accounting. Located in the large suburb of Westminster, FRCC is a public college with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the accounting program state that they receive average early career income of $38,838.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
