2025 Best Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region
93Colleges in the Great Lakes Region
25,596Associate Degrees
If you pursue a associate degree in liberal arts, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #1 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 93 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 25,596 associate degrees in liberal arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Liberal Arts School for Your Associate Degree
The liberal studies associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality liberal studies 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 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.
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 liberal arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of liberal arts 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.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized liberal arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for liberal arts 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 Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Liberal Arts in the Great Lakes Region
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for liberal arts students seeking a an associate degree. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
18 Top Great Lakes Region Schools for an Associate in Liberal Studies
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Honorable Mentions
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region award.
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.