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.
College Factual reviewed 9 schools in Arizona to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of criminal justice & corrections. Combined, these schools handed out 1,388 associate degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Criminal Justice (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Criminal Justice (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Grad Cert - Law Enforcement (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Grad Cert - Law Enforcement (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Corrections (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Corrections (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Administration (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Administration (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Criminal Justice & Law Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Criminal Justice & Law Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Criminology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Criminology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Grad Cert - Criminology (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Grad Cert - Criminology (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 2
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 2 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 2
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 1 offers with relevance >= 1.0
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 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.
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 Arizona list, to help you choose the best school for you.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "protective-security-safety-services//criminal-justice-and-corrections"
It's difficult to beat University of Phoenix - Arizona if you wish to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. UOPX - Arizona is a very large private for-profit university located in the large city of Phoenix.
Those criminal justice & corrections students who get their associate degree from University of Phoenix - Arizona make $6,864 more than the typical criminal justice grad.
American InterContinental University - Online is a good decision for students pursuing an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the city of Chandler, AIU Online is a private for-profit university with a large student population.
After graduation, criminal justice associate recipients usually make about $28,600 at the beginning of their careers.
Located in the city of Tucson, Pima County Community College District is a public college with a large student population.
Criminal Justice & Corrections associate degree recipients from Pima Community College get an earnings boost of around $7,807 above the typical earnings of criminal justice & corrections majors.
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.