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.
College Factual looked at 45 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Liberal Arts / Sciences & Humanities Associate Degree Schools in North Carolina ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 16,587 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
The liberal arts / sciences & humanities associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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 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 much a school focuses on liberal arts / sciences & humanities students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of liberal arts / sciences & humanities students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 liberal arts / sciences & humanities 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 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.
The liberal arts / sciences & humanities school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Liberal Arts / Sciences & Humanities Associate Degree Schools in North Carolina.
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Additional Noteworthy Schools
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 / Sciences & Humanities Associate Degree Schools in North Carolina 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).