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.
College Factual reviewed 3 schools in West Virginia to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of criminal justice & corrections. Combined, these schools handed out 235 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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.
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
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 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.
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 West Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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American Public University System is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the town of Charles Town, American Military University is a private for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the criminal justice program state that they receive average early career wages of $46,978.
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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
