If you plan on getting your associate degree in social work, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #66 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 23 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Social Work Associate Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,934 associate degrees in social work during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Associate Degree
The social work associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality social work 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 take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 social work students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other social work students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 social work 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 social work related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for social work 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 Social Work Associate Degree Schools list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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South Texas College is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in social work. Located in the midsize city of McAllen, South Texas College is a public college with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the social work program state that they receive average early career earnings of $18,336.
Capital Community College is a good decision for students pursuing an associate degree in social work. Located in the midsize city of Hartford, Capital Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduation, social work associate recipients generally make about $29,555 in the first five years of their 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).
The social work associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality social work program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
