Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Accounting (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Accounting earn a median of $47,660 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $32,411 and $63,692. We rank the 61 U.S. colleges whose Accounting programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 3,873 graduates in all. That puts Accounting at #12 of 27 associate degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Prince George's Community College, in Maryland, leads at $66,793, 36% above the median ranked school ($49,062). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $45,625 and $52,211, and the lowest earns $33,134, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 37 of the 61 ranked schools (61%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 18 public, 2 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 77% are public. The top 20 are spread across 16 states, with New York the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $8,556 a year, against $9,328 across all 61 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $15,294 in federal loans, about 27% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 1.0 years.
Showing the top 50 of 61 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Prince George's Community College Largo, MD Public · 2-year | $66,793 | 27 † | — | $8,672 | 0.6 |
| 2 | Austin Community College District Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $65,993 | 30 † | — | $6,390 | 0.4 |
| 3 | College of the Canyons Santa Clarita, CA Public · 4-year | $64,025 | 63 | — | $3,702 | 0.3 |
| 4 | Indiana Wesleyan University-Marion Marion, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,891 | 44 | $24,250 | $22,866 | 1.7 |
| 5 | Oakland Community College Auburn Hills, MI Public · 2-year | $62,744 | 63 | $12,181 | $5,777 | 0.4 |
| 6 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $62,156 | 70 | $9,000 | $7,095 | 0.5 |
| 7 | Saint Louis Community College Bridgeton, MO Public · 4-year | $59,184 | 25 † | — | $8,440 | 0.7 |
| 8 | Connecticut State Community College New Britain, CT Public · 2-year | $58,568 | 131 | — | $11,513 | 1.1 |
| 9 | St Cloud Technical and Community College Saint Cloud, MN Public · 2-year | $56,802 | 27 † | — | $9,635 | 1.0 |
| 10 | Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,716 | 241 | $19,000 | $36,708 | 5.0 |
| 11 | Suffolk County Community College Selden, NY Public · 2-year | $56,569 | 75 | $7,500 | $5,258 | 0.5 |
| 12 | Essex County College Newark, NJ Public · 2-year | $56,282 | 55 | — | $4,436 | 0.5 |
| 13 | University of Alaska Anchorage Anchorage, AK Public · 4-year | $55,363 | 25 † | — | $15,301 | 2.5 |
| 14 | CUNY New York City College of Technology Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $55,240 | 47 | — | $5,127 | 0.5 |
| 15 | Community College of Allegheny County Pittsburgh, PA Public · 2-year | $52,824 | 43 | $13,087 | $13,970 | 1.7 |
| 16 | Portland Community College Portland, OR Public · 2-year | $52,211 | 51 | $17,500 | $10,405 | 1.4 |
| 17 | Hudson County Community College Jersey City, NJ Public · 2-year | $52,195 | 63 | — | $7,307 | 1.0 |
| 18 | South Central College North Mankato, MN Public · 2-year | $51,971 | 29 † | — | $9,082 | 1.3 |
| 19 | Southeast Technical College Sioux Falls, SD Public · 2-year | $51,789 | 56 | $18,618 | $17,400 | 2.3 |
| 20 | Bunker Hill Community College Boston, MA Public · 2-year | $51,514 | 33 † | — | $7,818 | 1.5 |
| 21 | North Hennepin Community College Brooklyn Park, MN Public · 2-year | $51,469 | 32 † | — | $12,186 | 1.8 |
| 22 | CUNY LaGuardia Community College Long Island City, NY Public · 2-year | $51,368 | 191 | — | $6,120 | 0.8 |
| 23 | Monroe University Bronx, NY For-profit · 4-year | $50,837 | 63 | $15,857 | $14,522 | 1.9 |
| 24 | Finger Lakes Community College Canandaigua, NY Public · 2-year | $50,761 | 28 † | $16,743 | $13,898 | 1.9 |
| 25 | Sullivan University Louisville, KY For-profit · 4-year | $50,266 | 29 † | $21,168 | $25,532 | 3.4 |
| 26 | Chemeketa Community College Salem, OR Public · 4-year | $49,948 | 25 † | — | $8,200 | 1.3 |
| 27 | CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College New York, NY Public · 2-year | $49,935 | 175 | $9,500 | $4,976 | 0.7 |
| 28 | Blinn College District Brenham, TX Public · 2-year | $49,804 | 28 † | $13,375 | $10,844 | 1.4 |
| 29 | Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,543 | 77 | $23,281 | $30,498 | 4.0 |
| 30 | University of Phoenix-Arizona Phoenix, AZ For-profit · 4-year | $49,277 | 413 | $21,369 | $13,520 | 2.1 |
| 31 | Grand Rapids Community College Grand Rapids, MI Public · 2-year | $49,062 | 27 † | $9,000 | $8,621 | 1.2 |
| 32 | Dallas College Dallas, TX Public · 4-year | $48,906 | 50 | $11,863 | $3,214 | 0.5 |
| 33 | Niagara County Community College Sanborn, NY Public · 2-year | $48,881 | 46 | $11,000 | $6,876 | 1.0 |
| 34 | Baker College Owosso, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,701 | 66 | $23,522 | $13,157 | 1.9 |
| 35 | Iowa Central Community College Fort Dodge, IA Public · 2-year | $48,068 | 31 † | $13,150 | $9,328 | 1.7 |
| 36 | CUNY Kingsborough Community College Brooklyn, NY Public · 2-year | $47,930 | 111 | — | $5,606 | 0.9 |
| 37 | CUNY Queensborough Community College Bayside, NY Public · 2-year | $47,921 | 62 | — | $4,458 | 0.7 |
| 38 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $47,537 | 47 | $17,086 | $9,597 | 1.4 |
| 39 | Hudson Valley Community College Troy, NY Public · 2-year | $47,322 | 36 † | $12,219 | $8,501 | 1.5 |
| 40 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $47,037 | 29 † | $15,973 | $14,471 | 2.7 |
| 41 | Bryant & Stratton College-Buffalo Buffalo, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,709 | 110 | $22,077 | $14,135 | 2.6 |
| 42 | Houston City College Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $46,694 | 31 † | — | $5,737 | 1.0 |
| 43 | Midlands Technical College West Columbia, SC Public · 2-year | $46,546 | 25 † | — | $4,647 | 0.8 |
| 44 | Tidewater Community College Norfolk, VA Public · 2-year | $45,829 | 43 | $12,599 | $11,762 | 2.6 |
| 45 | Liberty University Lynchburg, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,734 | 40 | $23,833 | $29,357 | 6.4 |
| 46 | Anoka-Ramsey Community College Coon Rapids, MN Public · 2-year | $45,625 | 50 | $20,186 | $16,434 | 4.2 |
| 47 | Delaware Technical Community College-Terry Dover, DE Public · 4-year | $45,606 | 42 | $7,000 | $11,578 | 2.5 |
| 48 | College of Southern Nevada Las Vegas, NV Public · 4-year | $45,585 | 44 | $7,375 | $6,615 | 1.5 |
| 49 | Paris Junior College Paris, TX Public · 2-year | $45,243 | 35 † | — | $7,690 | 1.5 |
| 50 | Northwest Mississippi Community College Senatobia, MS Public · 2-year | $43,668 | 36 † | — | $7,911 | 1.2 |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only associate degree programs in Accounting (CIP 5203, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 61.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 2 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Accounting earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | $51,469 | 5 | St Cloud Technical and Community College |
| New York | $49,408 | 14 | Nassau Community College |
| Michigan | $49,062 | 3 | Oakland Community College |
| Texas | $47,800 | 6 | Austin Community College District |
| South Dakota | $43,569 | 3 | Southeast Technical College |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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Health Sciences (General) (Associate)
$51,180 national median · 25 schools
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