If you pursue a associate degree in health & physical education, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #25 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Health & Physical Education Associate Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 3,650 associate degrees in health & physical education to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Exercise & Sports Science (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Exercise & Sports Science (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA in Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Sport Management" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Sport Management" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Exercise Science (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Exercise Science (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 5
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 1 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 1
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 0 offers with relevance >= 0.9
DEBUG: Backfilling with 1 offers with relevance >= 0.8
Choosing a Great Health & Physical Education School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of health & physical education 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their associate degree from the school. After all, your associate degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 health & physical education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other health & physical education 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 much debt health & physical education 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 health & physical education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for health & physical education 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 Health & Physical Education Associate Degree Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "parks-recreation-fitness//health-and-physical-education"
It is hard to beat Riverside City College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in health & physical education. Riverside City College is a fairly large public college located in the large city of Riverside.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the phys ed program earn around $25,516 in their early career salary.
It's hard to beat Mt. San Antonio College if you want to pursue an associate degree in health & physical education. Mt. SAC is a fairly large public college located in the large suburb of Walnut.
Students who graduate with their associate from the phys ed program report average early career wages of $19,869.
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in health & physical education needs to look into International Sports Sciences Association. Located in the midsize suburb of Carpinteria, ISSA is a private for-profit school with a small student population.
Health & Physical Education associate degree recipients from International Sports Sciences Association get an earnings boost of about $16,092 over the typical earnings of health & physical education graduates.
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 health & physical education 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
