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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 174 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 take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host 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 complete 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 the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Accounting Associate Degree Schools in Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Liberty University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in accounting. Liberty University is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Lynchburg.
Accounting associate degree recipients from Liberty University earn a boost of approximately $4,995 above the average earnings of accounting graduates.
Every student who is interested in an associate degree in accounting needs to look into Tidewater Community College. Located in the midsize city of Norfolk, Tidewater Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Associate students who receive their degree from the accounting program earn about $29,056 in their early career salary.
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
