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.
College Factual looked at 13 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Communication & Media Studies Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 555 associate degrees in communication & media studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Associate Degree
The communications 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. 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 consider a school'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 communication & media studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of communication & media studies students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 much debt communication & media studies 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 communication & media studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for communication & media studies 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 Communication & Media Studies Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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County College of Morris is a wonderful decision for students interested in an associate degree in communication & media studies. County College of Morris is a medium-sized public college located in the large suburb of Randolph.
Soon after graduating, communications associate recipients usually earn an average of $15,905 at the beginning of their careers.
Nassau Community College is a great option for individuals pursuing an associate degree in communication & media studies. Nassau Community College is a fairly large public college located in the large suburb of Garden City.
Associate recipients from the communication & media studies program at Nassau Community College earn $4,412 more than the typical graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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 communications 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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