an associate degree in heavy/industrial equipment maintenance is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #63 out of 328 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 8 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Heavy/Industrial Equipment Maintenance Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 224 associate degrees in heavy/industrial equipment maintenance during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Heavy/Industrial Equipment Maintenance School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of heavy/industrial equipment maintenance for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality equipment maintenance program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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.
Average Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 heavy/industrial equipment maintenance students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other heavy/industrial equipment maintenance 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 heavy/industrial equipment maintenance to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized heavy/industrial equipment maintenance related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for heavy/industrial equipment maintenance 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 Heavy/Industrial Equipment Maintenance Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student who is interested in an associate degree in heavy/industrial equipment maintenance needs to check out Ranken Technical College. Located in the large city of Saint Louis, Ranken Technical College is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the equipment maintenance program report average early career wages of $52,300.
Located in the rural area of Rosemount, DCTC is a public college with a small student population.
Heavy/Industrial Equipment Maintenance associate degree recipients from Dakota County Technical College receive an earnings boost of approximately $15,219 above the typical earnings of heavy/industrial equipment maintenance majors.
Located in the rural area of Linn, STC is a public college with a small student population.
Those heavy/industrial equipment maintenance students who get their associate degree from State Technical College of Missouri earn $2,883 more than the average equipment maintenance student.
Rankings in Majors Related to Equipment Maintenance
One of 7 majors within the Mechanic & Repair Technologies area of study, Heavy/Industrial Equipment Maintenance has other similar majors worth exploring.
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.
Your choice of heavy/industrial equipment maintenance for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality equipment maintenance program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
