Computer & Information Sciences is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #5 most popular associate degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 22 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Computer & Information Sciences Associate Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 6,497 associate degrees in computer & information sciences during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Computer & Information Sciences School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of computer & information sciences for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality computer & information sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to computer & information sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of computer & information sciences 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 computer & information sciences 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 computer & information sciences related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for computer & information sciences 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 Computer & Information Sciences Associate Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college 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 computer & information sciences for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality computer & information sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
