If you pursue a associate degree in culinary arts, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #23 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 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 250 associate degrees in culinary arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Culinary Arts School for Your Associate Degree
The culinary arts 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to culinary arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of culinary arts students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 culinary arts 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 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 the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in Illinois list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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National Louis University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the large city of Chicago, NLU is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the culinary arts program report average early career income of $24,786.
It's hard to beat College of DuPage if you want to pursue an associate degree in culinary arts. COD is a very large public college located in the large suburb of Glen Ellyn.
Those culinary arts students who get their associate degree from College of DuPage receive $2,093 more than the average culinary arts student.
Joliet Junior College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Joliet Junior College is a moderately-sized public college located in the large suburb of Joliet.
Culinary Arts associate degree recipients from Joliet Junior College earn a boost of approximately $3,393 over the average income of culinary arts graduates.
It's hard to beat City Colleges of Chicago - Kennedy-King College if you want to pursue an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the large city of Chicago, Kennedy-King College is a public college with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the culinary arts program report average early career earnings of $19,447.
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 culinary arts 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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