Ranked #23 in popularity, culinary arts is one of the most sought-after associate degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in Colorado to determine which ones were the best for culinary arts students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,175 associate degrees in culinary arts to qualified students.
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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
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 Colorado 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 needs to check out Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts - Boulder. Escoffier - Boulder is a moderately-sized private for-profit school located in the city of Boulder.
Associate students who receive their degree from the culinary arts program earn around $30,224 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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
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