Ranked #21 in popularity, dental support services is one of the most sought-after associate degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 25 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for dental support services students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 756 associate degrees in dental support services during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Dental Support Services School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of dental support services for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality dental support 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
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a good 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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to dental support services students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other dental support services 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 easy is it for dental support services to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized dental support services related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for dental support services 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 Dental Support Services Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Century College is a wonderful choice for students pursuing an associate degree in dental support services. Located in the suburb of White Bear Lake, Century College is a public college with a medium-sized student population.
Soon after graduation, dental support associate recipients usually earn about $47,789 in their early careers.
Every student who is interested in an associate degree in dental support services has to check out Kirkwood Community College. Located in the midsize city of Cedar Rapids, Kirkwood Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Associate students who receive their degree from the dental support program make an average of $36,885 in the first couple years of their career.
It is difficult to beat Rochester Community and Technical College if you want to pursue an associate degree in dental support services. Rochester Community and Technical College is a small public college located in the medium-sized city of Rochester.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the dental support program make about $46,805 for their early career.
Located in the town of Emporia, Flint Hills Technical College is a public college with a small student population.
Those dental support services students who get their associate degree from Flint Hills Technical College receive $2,770 more than the standard dental support student.
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.