If you pursue a associate degree in general business/commerce, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #9 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 19 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best General Business/Commerce Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 775 associate degrees in general business/commerce to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Business/Commerce School for Your Associate Degree
The general business associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 consider 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 general business/commerce students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general business/commerce 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 general business/commerce to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general business/commerce related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general business/commerce 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 General Business/Commerce Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Every student who is interested in an associate degree in general business/commerce needs to check out Columbia College. Located in the city of Columbia, Columbia College Missouri is a private not-for-profit college with a medium-sized student population.
Those general business/commerce students who get their associate degree from Columbia College receive $4,274 more than the typical general business grad.
Southeast Technical College is a good decision for individuals pursuing an associate degree in general business/commerce. Southeast Tech is a small public college located in the midsize city of Sioux Falls.
Students who graduate with their associate from the general business program report average early career wages of $37,383.
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).
The general business associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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