Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies isn't the most popular associate program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #21 in popularity out of 38 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
College Factual looked at 12 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Associate Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 6,015 associate degrees in parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies School for Your Associate Degree
The parks & rec associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality parks & rec 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 quality 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 much a school focuses on parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies 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 much debt parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies 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 parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for parks, recreation, leisure, & fitness studies students working on their associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies Associate Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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).
The parks & rec associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality parks & rec program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
