If you pursue a associate degree in communication & media studies, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #24 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual reviewed 4 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of communication & media studies. Combined, these schools handed out 140 associate degrees in communication & media studies to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Media Communication (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Media Communication (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 1
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 1 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 1
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 0 offers with relevance >= 1.0
DEBUG: Backfilling with 0 offers with relevance >= 0.9
DEBUG: Backfilling with 1 offers with relevance >= 0.8
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. 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 college'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.
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 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 colleges 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 Pennsylvania list, to help you choose the best school for you.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "communication-journalism-media//communication-media-studies"
Community College of Philadelphia is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in communication & media studies. Located in the city of Philadelphia, Community College of Philadelphia is a public college with a large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the communications program report average early career wages of $24,794.
Northampton County Area Community College is a great option for individuals interested in an associate degree in communication & media studies. Northampton Community College is a moderately-sized public college located in the suburb of Bethlehem.
Communication & Media Studies associate degree recipients from Northampton County Area Community College receive an earnings boost of approximately $2,839 over the average income of communication & media studies graduates.
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).