Culinary Arts is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #23 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 824 associate degrees in culinary arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Culinary Arts School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of culinary arts for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality culinary arts 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
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 school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 culinary arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other culinary arts 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 easy is it for culinary arts to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized culinary arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for culinary arts 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 Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It's hard to beat Southwestern Oregon Community College if you want to pursue an associate degree in culinary arts. SWOCC is a small public college located in the remote town of Coos Bay.
Associate recipients from the culinary arts program at Southwestern Oregon Community College make $2,483 above the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Kapiolani Community College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the large city of Honolulu, Kapiolani CC is a public college with a moderately-sized student population.
Associate students who receive their degree from the culinary arts program make about $26,882 in their early career salary.
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).
Your choice of culinary arts for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality culinary arts program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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