an associate degree in carpentry is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #127 out of 328 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 7 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for carpentry students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 582 associate degrees in carpentry to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Construction Management (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Construction Management (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Construction Management (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Construction Management (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 4
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 3 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 3
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 1 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Carpentry School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of carpentry for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality carpentry program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of different 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 many resources a school devotes to carpentry students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of carpentry 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 carpentry 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 carpentry related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for carpentry 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 Carpentry Associate Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "construction-trades//carpenters"
It is hard to beat Ivy Tech Community College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in carpentry. Ivy Tech Community College is a very large public college located in the city of Indianapolis.
Associate recipients from the carpentry degree program at Ivy Tech Community College get $10,531 above the typical graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Ranken Technical College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in carpentry. Ranken Technical College is a small private not-for-profit college located in the city of Saint Louis.
Students who graduate with their associate from the carpentry program report average early career income of $35,975.
Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology is a great decision for individuals pursuing an associate degree in carpentry. Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology is a small public college located in the small city of Lancaster.
Associate students who receive their degree from the carpentry program earn an average of $37,611 for their early career.
It's hard to beat Johnson College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in carpentry. Located in the city of Scranton, Johnson College is a private not-for-profit college with a fairly small student population.More information about a associate in carpentry from Johnson College
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.