If you plan on getting your associate degree in general education, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #55 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Education Associate Degree Schools in the New England Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 120 associate degrees in general education to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Education School for Your Associate Degree
The education associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality education 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 host 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 general education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general education 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 general education 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 general education related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general education 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 General Education Associate Degree Schools in the New England Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Southern Maine Community College is a great option for individuals interested in an associate degree in general education. SMCC is a moderately-sized public college located in the city of South Portland.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the education program earn an average of $28,061 for their early career.
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
The education associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality education program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
