Criminal Justice & Corrections is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #4 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 5 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in Indiana ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 550 associate degrees in criminal justice & corrections during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Criminal Justice & Corrections School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of criminal justice & corrections for getting your associate degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 criminal justice & corrections students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of criminal justice & corrections students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 criminal justice & corrections to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized criminal justice & corrections related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for criminal justice & corrections students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Criminal Justice & Corrections Schools
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in Indiana list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student who is interested in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections needs to take a look at Ivy Tech Community College. Ivy Tech Community College is a very large public college located in the large city of Indianapolis.
Students who graduate with their associate from the criminal justice program state that they receive average early career wages of $34,299.
It is difficult to beat Purdue University Global if you wish to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Purdue University Global is a fairly large public university located in the city of West Lafayette.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their associate degree from Purdue University Global receive $12,942 more than the typical criminal justice graduate.
It is difficult to beat Vincennes University if you want to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the remote town of Vincennes, Vincennes University is a public university with a large student population.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the criminal justice program earn about $34,748 in the first couple years of their career.
Every student who is interested in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections has to take a look at Indiana Wesleyan University - National & Global. IWU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the rural area of Marion.
Students who graduate with their associate from the criminal justice program state that they receive average early career income of $38,495.
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.