an associate degree in visual & performing arts is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #9 out of 38 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 111 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Visual & Performing Arts Associate Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 19,205 associate degrees in visual & performing arts during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great Visual & Performing Arts School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of visual & performing arts for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality visual & performing arts 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
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on visual & performing arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of visual & performing arts students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 visual & performing 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 visual & performing arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for visual & performing 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 Visual & Performing Arts Associate Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.
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Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Visual & Performing Arts in the United States
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in visual & performing arts. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
22 Top Schools for an Associate in Visual & Performing Arts
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Additional Noteworthy Schools
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Visual & Performing Arts Associate Degree Schools award.
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).
Your choice of visual & performing arts for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality visual & performing arts program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
