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.
College Factual reviewed 5 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of culinary arts. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 214 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. 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 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 Pennsylvania list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Pennsylvania College of Technology is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Penn College is a small public college located in the small city of Williamsport.
Soon after graduation, culinary arts associate recipients typically make about $25,269 in the first five years of their career.
Pittsburgh Technical College is a wonderful decision for individuals pursuing an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the suburb of Oakdale, Pittsburgh Technical College is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Associate recipients from the culinary arts major at Pittsburgh Technical College get $2,320 above the standard graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in culinary arts needs to check out Montgomery County Community College. Located in the large suburb of Blue Bell, Montco is a public college with a medium-sized student population.
Those culinary arts students who get their associate degree from Montgomery County Community College earn $5,060 more than the standard culinary arts student.
It's hard to beat The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in culinary arts. The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College is a fairly small private for-profit college located in the large city of Philadelphia.
After graduating, culinary arts associate recipients usually earn around $25,893 in their early careers.
YTI is a small private for-profit school located in the midsize suburb of York.
Culinary Arts associate degree recipients from YTI Career Institute-York get an earnings boost of approximately $2,791 over the typical income of culinary arts graduates.
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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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