Communication & Journalism isn't the most popular associate program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #17 in popularity out of 38 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for communication & journalism students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 257 associate degrees in communication & journalism during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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
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 & journalism students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of communication & journalism 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 easy is it for communication & journalism 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 & journalism related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for communication & journalism students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Communication & Journalism Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Communication & Journalism Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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
