Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #4 most popular associate degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in West Virginia to determine which ones were the best for homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 349 associate degrees in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 much a school focuses on homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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 homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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 Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Associate Degree Schools in West Virginia ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
