When it comes to popularity, an associate degree in public administration & social service sits in the middle of the road, ranking #18 out of 38 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in Ohio to determine which ones were the best for public administration & social service students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 503 associate degrees in public administration & social service to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Public Administration & Social Service School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of public administration & social service for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality public administration & social service program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we consider 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 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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on public administration & social service students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public administration & social service 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 public administration & social service 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 public administration & social service related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for public administration & social service students working on their associate degree.
The public administration & social service school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Public Administration & Social Service Associate Degree Schools in Ohio.
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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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of public administration & social service for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality public administration & social service program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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