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.
College Factual reviewed 2 schools in South Dakota to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of accounting. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 43 associate degrees in accounting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 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 South Dakota list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Southeast Technical College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in accounting. Southeast Tech is a small public college located in the city of Sioux Falls.
Those accounting students who get their associate degree from Southeast Technical College earn $7,246 more than the average accounting grad.
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).
