an associate degree in history is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #50 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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best History Associate Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,538 associate degrees in history during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Choosing a Great History School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of history for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality history program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a quality 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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on history students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other history 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 much debt history 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 history related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for history 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 History Associate Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study History in the United States
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for history students seeking a an associate degree.
American Public University System is one of the best schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in history. Located in the town of Charles Town, American Military University is a private for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a associate in history from American Public University System
Liberty University is a wonderful option for students interested in an associate degree in history. Located in the city of Lynchburg, Liberty University is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.More information about a associate in history from Liberty University
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.