Vehicle Maintenance & Repair is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #14 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Associate Degree Schools in South Dakota ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 227 associate degrees in vehicle maintenance & repair during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Vehicle Maintenance & Repair School for Your Associate Degree
The vehicle repair 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 vehicle maintenance & repair students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of vehicle maintenance & repair 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.
Student Debt - How much debt vehicle maintenance & repair 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 vehicle maintenance & repair related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for vehicle maintenance & repair students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Associate Degree Schools in South Dakota list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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It's hard to beat Lake Area Technical Institute if you want to pursue an associate degree in vehicle maintenance & repair. Located in the town of Watertown, LATI is a public school with a small student population.
Associate recipients from the vehicle maintenance & repair degree program at Lake Area Technical Institute earn $3,229 above the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Southeast Technical College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in vehicle maintenance & repair. Southeast Tech is a small public college located in the midsize city of Sioux Falls.
Vehicle Maintenance & Repair associate degree recipients from Southeast Technical College receive an earnings boost of approximately $2,411 above the typical earnings of vehicle maintenance & repair majors.
Western Dakota Technical Institute is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in vehicle maintenance & repair. Located in the city of Rapid City, Western Dakota Tech is a public school with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the vehicle repair program state that they receive average early career income of $38,031.
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).
The vehicle repair 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
