an associate degree in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #4 out of 38 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 29 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,268 associate degrees in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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. 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 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.
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 Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college 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).
Your choice of homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
