Fire Protection is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #36 most popular associate degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 68 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Fire Protection Associate Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 3,939 associate degrees in fire protection to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Fire Protection School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of fire protection 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a good 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 Early-Career Salaries
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their associate degree from the school. After all, your associate degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 fire protection students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other fire protection 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 fire protection 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 fire protection related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for fire protection 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 Fire Protection Associate Degree Schools list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Fire Protection in the United States
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in fire protection. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
13 Top Schools for an Associate in Fire Protection
Columbia Southern University is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in fire protection. Located in the fringe town of Orange Beach, Columbia Southern University is a private for-profit university with a large student population.
Fire Protection associate degree recipients from Columbia Southern University receive an earnings boost of approximately $14,700 over the average earnings of fire protection majors.
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Additional Noteworthy Schools
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Fire Protection Associate Degree Schools 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.
Your choice of fire protection 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
