Ranked #4 in popularity, criminal justice & corrections is one of the most sought-after associate degree programs in the nation. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 13 schools in Wisconsin to determine which ones were the best for criminal justice & corrections students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 474 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. 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 collection 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 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 complete 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
The criminal justice school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in Wisconsin.
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It is hard to beat Gateway Technical College if you want to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Gateway Technical College is a fairly large public college located in the city of Kenosha.
After graduation, criminal justice associate recipients usually earn an average of $38,881 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections needs to look into Fox Valley Technical College. Located in the suburb of Appleton, FVTC is a public college with a fairly large student population.
After graduating, criminal justice associate recipients generally make an average of $39,571 in the first five years of their career.
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections has to check out Madison Area Technical College. Madison College is a fairly large public college located in the city of Madison.
Students who graduate with their associate from the criminal justice program state that they receive average early career earnings of $39,174.
Located in the town of Rice Lake, WITC is a public college with a small student population.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their associate degree from Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College receive $4,861 more than the typical criminal justice student.
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.
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
