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 2 schools in South Dakota to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of criminal justice & corrections. Combined, these schools handed out 57 associate degrees in criminal justice & corrections to qualified students.
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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 colleges for criminal justice & corrections students working on their associate degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Criminal Justice & Corrections Associate Degree Schools in South Dakota list to help you make the college decision.
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It's hard to beat Southeast Technical College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the medium-sized city of Sioux Falls, Southeast Tech is a public college with a small student population.
Associate recipients from the criminal justice & corrections degree program at Southeast Technical College get $10,144 more than the average college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
It is hard to beat Lake Area Technical Institute if you wish to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice & corrections. LATI is a small public school located in the remote town of Watertown.
After graduation, criminal justice associate recipients usually make around $41,230 at the beginning of their careers.
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.
