If you plan on getting your associate degree in cosmetology, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #81 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Texas to determine which ones were the best for cosmetology students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 156 associate degrees in cosmetology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Cosmetology School for Your Associate Degree
The cosmetology associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality cosmetology program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 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.
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 cosmetology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other cosmetology 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 cosmetology to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized cosmetology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for cosmetology 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 Cosmetology Associate Degree Schools in Texas ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Houston Community College is one of the best schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in cosmetology. Located in the city of Houston, Houston Community College is a public college with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the cosmetology program report average early career earnings of $15,372.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The cosmetology associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality cosmetology program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
