2025 Best Communication & Media Studies Associate Degree Schools in California
6Colleges in California
3,328Associate Degrees
Communication & Media Studies is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #24 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 6 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for communication & media studies students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 3,328 associate degrees in communication & media studies to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of communication & media studies for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality communications 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
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to communication & media studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other communication & media studies students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 easy is it for communication & media studies to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized communication & media studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for communication & media studies students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Communication & Media Studies Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Communication & Media Studies Associate Degree Schools in California ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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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 communication & media studies for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality communications program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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