Human Development & Family Studies is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #17 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Human Development & Family Studies Associate Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 225 associate degrees in human development & family studies to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Human Development & Family Studies School for Your Associate Degree
The human development associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality human development program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 human development & family studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other human development & family studies students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 human development & family studies 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 human development & family studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for human development & family studies students working on their associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Human Development & Family Studies Associate Degree Schools in Virginia ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It is hard to beat Northern Virginia Community College if you want to pursue an associate degree in human development & family studies. Located in the suburb of Annandale, Northern Virginia Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Associate recipients from the human development & family studies program at Northern Virginia Community College make $2,265 more than the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
It is difficult to beat Tidewater Community College if you want to pursue an associate degree in human development & family studies. Tidewater Community College is a large public college located in the medium-sized city of Norfolk.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the human development program make around $23,239 in the first couple years of working.
One of 8 majors within the Family, Consumer & Human Sciences area of study, Human Development & Family Studies has other similar majors worth exploring.
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).
The human development associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality human development program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
