Culinary Arts is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #23 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2024, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in Ohio ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 133 associate degrees in culinary arts during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Culinary Arts School for Your Associate Degree
The culinary arts associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to culinary arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of culinary 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 much debt culinary arts 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 culinary arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for culinary 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 Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in Ohio list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Culinary Arts in Ohio
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in culinary arts.
Top Ohio Schools for an Associate in Culinary Arts
It is hard to beat Cincinnati State Technical and Community College if you want to pursue an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the large city of Cincinnati, Cincinnati State is a public college with a moderately-sized student population.
Culinary Arts associate degree recipients from Cincinnati State Technical and Community College receive an earnings boost of around $4,962 over the average earnings of culinary arts majors.
Sinclair Community College is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the city of Dayton, Sinclair Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, culinary arts associate recipients typically earn around $21,940 in the first five years of their career.
Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in culinary arts has to check out Cuyahoga Community College District. Cuyahoga Community College District is a fairly large public college located in the large city of Cleveland.
Students who graduate with their associate from the culinary arts program state that they receive average early career income of $23,512.
It is hard to beat Stark State College if you want to pursue an associate degree in culinary arts. Stark State College is a large public college located in the suburb of North Canton.
Associate students who receive their degree from the culinary arts program make around $23,521 in their early career salary.
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).
college factual
The culinary arts associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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