Data Processing is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #99 most popular associate degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual reviewed 13 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of data processing. Combined, these schools handed out 604 associate degrees in data processing to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Data Processing School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of data processing for getting your associate degree school matters. 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
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a quality 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 data processing students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of data processing 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 data processing 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 data processing related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for data processing students working on their associate degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Data Processing Associate Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.
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Every student who is interested in an associate degree in data processing has to take a look at Greenville Technical College. GTC is a large public college located in the city of Greenville.
Those data processing students who get their associate degree from Greenville Technical College earn $3,634 more than the average data processing student.
Queensborough Community College is a good option for individuals pursuing an associate degree in data processing. QCC is a fairly large public college located in the city of Bayside.
Associate students who receive their degree from the data processing program make around $26,484 in the first couple years of working.
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in data processing needs to take a look at American Public University System. Located in the fringe town of Charles Town, American Military University is a private for-profit university with a very large student population.
Data Processing associate degree recipients from American Public University System get an earnings boost of about $9,373 over the typical income of data processing majors.
NMSU Dona Ana is a medium-sized public university located in the midsize city of Las Cruces.
Associate recipients from the data processing major at New Mexico State University - Dona Ana earn $3,131 more than the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Horry-Georgetown Technical College is a medium-sized public college located in the small city of Conway.
Data Processing associate degree recipients from Horry-Georgetown Technical College earn a boost of approximately $3,397 over the typical earnings of data processing majors.
Located in the suburb of West Columbia, MTC is a public college with a moderately-sized student population.
Those data processing students who get their associate degree from Midlands Technical College receive $4,584 more than the standard data processing grad.
Spartanburg Community College is a moderately-sized public college located in the midsize suburb of Spartanburg.
Data Processing associate degree recipients from Spartanburg Community College earn a boost of about $4,274 over the typical earnings of data processing majors.
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).