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 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in New Jersey ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 118 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
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. 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 account for this 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 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 schools 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 New Jersey ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Every student who is interested in an associate degree in culinary arts has to check out Atlantic Cape Community College. Located in the rural area of Mays Landing, Atlantic Cape Community College is a public college with a small student population.
Culinary Arts associate degree recipients from Atlantic Cape Community College receive an earnings boost of about $2,662 above the typical earnings of culinary arts majors.
Hudson County Community College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. HCCC is a moderately-sized public college located in the large city of Jersey City.
After graduating, culinary arts associate recipients usually make an average of $26,170 in the first five years of their career.
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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