If you plan on getting your associate degree in homeland security, law enforcement & firefighting, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #4 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 11 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting Associate Degree Schools in Minnesota ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 403 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. 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 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.
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 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 schools 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 Minnesota 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).
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
