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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 15 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for criminal justice & corrections students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 597 associate degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Criminal Justice & Corrections School for Your Associate Degree
The criminal justice associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality criminal justice program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to criminal justice & corrections students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminal justice & corrections students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 criminal justice & corrections 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 criminal justice & corrections related body.
Our complete 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.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in Pennsylvania list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections has to check out Community College of Philadelphia. Community College of Philadelphia is a fairly large public college located in the city of Philadelphia.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the criminal justice program earn an average of $34,224 in their early career salary.
Harrisburg Area Community College is one of the best schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. HACC is a large public college located in the city of Harrisburg.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their associate degree from Harrisburg Area Community College earn $4,949 more than the typical criminal justice graduate.
Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections has to look into Lackawanna College. Located in the city of Scranton, Lackawanna College is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the criminal justice program make about $22,394 in the first couple years of working.
Montgomery County Community College is a great choice for students interested in an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the large suburb of Blue Bell, Montco is a public college with a moderately-sized student population.
Associate recipients from the criminal justice & corrections degree program at Montgomery County Community College earn $15,023 more than the average college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
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.
The criminal justice associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality criminal justice program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
