Marketing is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #64 most popular associate degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Marketing Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 279 associate degrees in marketing during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Marketing School for Your Associate Degree
The marketing associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality marketing 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
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to marketing students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of marketing students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt marketing students go into to obtain their associate degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized marketing related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for marketing 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 Marketing Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Lake Area Technical Institute is a great decision for students interested in an associate degree in marketing. LATI is a small public school located in the town of Watertown.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the marketing program earn an average of $32,043 for their early career.
Every student who is interested in an associate degree in marketing needs to take a look at Southeast Technical College. Located in the city of Sioux Falls, Southeast Tech is a public college with a small student population.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the marketing program make about $39,617 in the first couple years of their career.
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 marketing associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality marketing program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
