Ranked #1 in popularity, liberal arts / sciences & humanities 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 14 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for liberal arts / sciences & humanities students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,200 associate degrees in liberal arts / sciences & humanities during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Liberal Arts / Sciences & Humanities School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of liberal arts / sciences & humanities for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality liberal arts / sciences & humanities 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 include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 many resources a school devotes to liberal arts / sciences & humanities students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other liberal arts / sciences & humanities 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 easy is it for liberal arts / sciences & humanities to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized liberal arts / sciences & humanities related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for liberal arts / sciences & humanities students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Liberal Arts / Sciences & Humanities Schools
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 Liberal Arts / Sciences & Humanities Associate Degree Schools in Pennsylvania list to help you make the college decision.
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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).
Your choice of liberal arts / sciences & humanities for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality liberal arts / sciences & humanities program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
