Human Services is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #31 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for human services students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 188 associate degrees in human services during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Human Services School for Your Associate Degree
The human services associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality human services program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 much a school focuses on human services students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other human services 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 human services to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized human services related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for human services 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 Human Services Associate Degree Schools in Pennsylvania list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Human Services in Pennsylvania
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in human services.
Top Pennsylvania Schools for an Associate in Human Services
Community College of Philadelphia is a good choice for individuals pursuing an associate degree in human services. Community College of Philadelphia is a fairly large public college located in the large city of Philadelphia.
Associate students who receive their degree from the human services program make around $27,703 in their early career salary.
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in human services has to check out Harcum College. Located in the suburb of Bryn Mawr, Harcum College is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Soon after graduating, human services associate recipients usually earn about $29,712 at the beginning of their careers.
Every student who is interested in an associate degree in human services needs to take a look at Harrisburg Area Community College. HACC is a large public college located in the small city of Harrisburg.
Associate students who receive their degree from the human services program earn about $30,857 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).