Design & Applied Arts is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #19 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in Iowa to determine which ones were the best for design & applied arts students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 63 associate degrees in design & applied arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Take the first step toward a career of visual expression and doing what you love with this online associate degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
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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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on design & applied arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other design & applied arts students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for design & applied arts to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized design & applied arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for design & applied arts students working on their associate degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Design & Applied Arts Associate Degree Schools in Iowa list to help you make the college decision.
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Take the first step toward a career of visual expression and doing what you love with this online associate degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in design & applied arts has to take a look at Des Moines Area Community College. Located in the large suburb of Ankeny, DMACC is a public college with a very large student population.
After graduating, design associate recipients generally make an average of $25,265 in their early careers.
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in design & applied arts needs to take a look at Kirkwood Community College. Located in the midsize city of Cedar Rapids, Kirkwood Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Associate recipients from the design & applied arts major at Kirkwood Community College get $3,426 above the standard college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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.
