If you plan on getting your associate degree in fire protection, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #36 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for fire protection students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 110 associate degrees in fire protection 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 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 full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for fire protection students working on their associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Fire Protection Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Onondaga Community College is a good decision for individuals interested in an associate degree in fire protection. Located in the suburb of Syracuse, OCC is a public college with a medium-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the fire protection program report average early career wages of $37,705.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team