2025 Best Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Southwest Region
43Colleges in the Southwest Region
17,168Associate 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.
College Factual looked at 43 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 17,168 associate degrees in liberal arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: After cleaning major_slug = "liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts"
DEBUG: Before URL cleaning = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After TrimSuffix = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After HTTPS placeholder = "HTTPS_TEMP_PLACEHOLDERwww.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After slash cleaning = "HTTPS_TEMP_PLACEHOLDERwww.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After URL cleaning = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: Checking offer "AA in Liberal Arts" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "AA in Liberal Arts" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BA in General Studies" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BA in General Studies" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "General Studies (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "General Studies (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Liberal Arts & Humanities Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Liberal Arts & Humanities Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 4
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 2 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 2
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 0 offers with relevance >= 1.0
DEBUG: Backfilling with 2 offers with relevance >= 0.9
Choosing a Great Liberal Arts School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of liberal arts for getting your associate degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 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.
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 liberal arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other liberal arts 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.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized liberal arts related body.
Our complete 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 picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Liberal Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "liberal-arts-sciences-humanities//liberal-arts-and-general-studies//liberal-arts"
DEBUG: After cleaning major_slug = "liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts"
DEBUG: Before URL cleaning = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After TrimSuffix = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After HTTPS placeholder = "HTTPS_TEMP_PLACEHOLDERwww.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After slash cleaning = "HTTPS_TEMP_PLACEHOLDERwww.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After URL cleaning = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After cleaning major_slug = "liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts"
DEBUG: Before URL cleaning = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After TrimSuffix = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After HTTPS placeholder = "HTTPS_TEMP_PLACEHOLDERwww.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After slash cleaning = "HTTPS_TEMP_PLACEHOLDERwww.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
DEBUG: After URL cleaning = "https://www.collegefactual.com/majors/liberal-arts-sciences-humanities/liberal-arts-and-general-studies/liberal-arts/offers.json"
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.