an associate degree in social work is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #66 out of 328 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in the New England Region to determine which ones were the best for social work students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 61 associate degrees in social work during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 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 colleges 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 in the New England Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Capital Community College is a wonderful decision for students pursuing an associate degree in social work. Located in the city of Hartford, Capital Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the social work program earn about $29,555 in the first couple years of working.
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
