Ranked #31 in popularity, human services is one of the most sought-after associate degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for human services students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 676 associate degrees in human services to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Human Services School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of human services 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to human services students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of human services students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt human services 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 human services related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for human services 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 Human Services Associate Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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It's hard to beat Tacoma Community College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in human services. Located in the city of Tacoma, Tacoma Community College is a public college with a medium-sized student population.
After graduating, human services associate recipients typically earn about $41,008 in their early careers.
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 human services 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.
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