If you pursue a associate degree in criminal justice & corrections, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #4 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 70 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for criminal justice & corrections students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 3,884 associate degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
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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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account we consider 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.
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
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 schools for criminal justice & corrections students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Criminal Justice & Corrections Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Criminal Justice & Corrections in the Middle Atlantic Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
14 Top Middle Atlantic Region Schools for an Associate in Criminal Justice
Monroe College is a wonderful choice for students interested in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Monroe College is a moderately-sized private for-profit college located in the city of Bronx.
Students who graduate with their associate from the criminal justice program report average early career earnings of $24,567.
Erie Community College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Erie Community College is a medium-sized public college located in the city of Buffalo.
Criminal Justice & Corrections associate degree recipients from Erie Community College receive an earnings boost of about $2,309 above the typical income of criminal justice & corrections graduates.
It is hard to beat Community College of Philadelphia if you want to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the city of Philadelphia, Community College of Philadelphia is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their associate degree from Community College of Philadelphia receive $3,193 more than the average criminal justice grad.
Located in the small city of Harrisburg, HACC is a public college with a large student population.
Associate recipients from the criminal justice & corrections degree program at Harrisburg Area Community College get $6,885 more than the standard graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
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Honorable Mentions
Here are some additional great schools for Criminal Justice & Corrections students in the Middle Atlantic Region that almost earned our Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region award.
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.