Human Services is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #31 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in South Carolina to determine which ones were the best for human services students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 158 associate degrees in human services to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Doctorate - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Doctorate - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Human Services (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Human Services (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "PhD - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "PhD - Human Services (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Doctorate Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Doctorate Programs (I Have a Masters)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.9
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Social Work & Social Sciences Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.9)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BSW - Social Work (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "BSW - Social Work (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "DSW - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "DSW - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MSW - Social Work (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "MSW - Social Work (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "PhD - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "PhD - Social Work (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 7
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 7 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 7
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 4 offers with relevance >= 1.0
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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 South Carolina list, to help you choose the best school for you.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "social-services-public-administration//human-services"
Piedmont Technical College is a great choice for students interested in an associate degree in human services. Piedmont Technical College is a small public college located in the town of Greenwood.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the human services program make about $27,781 for their early career.
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).