Construction Trades isn't the most popular associate program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #22 in popularity out of 38 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 8 schools in Minnesota to determine which ones were the best for construction trades students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 287 associate degrees in construction trades to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Construction Trades School for Your Associate Degree
The construction trades associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality construction trades 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 account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 much a school focuses on construction trades students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other construction trades students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 construction trades 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 construction trades related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for construction trades 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 Construction Trades Associate Degree Schools in Minnesota list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
The construction trades associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality construction trades program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
