Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Criminal Justice (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Criminal Justice earn a median of $46,706 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $31,475 and $63,659. We rank the 190 U.S. colleges whose Criminal Justice programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 14,588 graduates in all. That puts Criminal Justice at #13 of 27 associate degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Alexandria Technical & Community College, in Minnesota, leads at $67,066, 41% above the median ranked school ($47,705). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $44,231 and $53,359, and the lowest earns $32,460, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 111 of the 190 ranked schools (58%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 17 public, 2 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 87% are public. Minnesota places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (2).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $9,727 a year, against $8,523 across all 190 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $12,000 in federal loans, about 19% 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 0.8 years.
Showing the top 50 of 190 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Alexandria Technical & Community College Alexandria, MN Public · 2-year | $67,066 | 104 | $12,000 | $13,691 | 0.9 |
| 2 | Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City Oklahoma City, OK Public · 4-year | $66,287 | 30 † | — | $7,081 | 0.4 |
| 3 | Columbia Southern University Orange Beach, AL For-profit · 4-year | $66,000 | 157 | $12,140 | $14,580 | 0.9 |
| 4 | North Hennepin Community College Brooklyn Park, MN Public · 2-year | $65,910 | 73 | $22,625 | $12,186 | 0.9 |
| 5 | Northland Community and Technical College Thief River Falls, MN Public · 2-year | $64,953 | 29 † | $12,000 | $13,975 | 1.0 |
| 6 | Inver Hills Community College Inver Grove Heights, MN Public · 2-year | $64,621 | 50 | $17,000 | $11,636 | 0.9 |
| 7 | Grand Rapids Community College Grand Rapids, MI Public · 2-year | $64,550 | 79 | $11,600 | $8,621 | 0.6 |
| 8 | Jefferson College Hillsboro, MO Public · 2-year | $64,131 | 33 † | — | $7,378 | 0.5 |
| 9 | Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College Cloquet, MN Public · 4-year | $63,056 | 48 | $9,500 | $12,677 | 1.0 |
| 10 | Northern Virginia Community College Annandale, VA Public · 2-year | $63,015 | 34 † | — | $9,919 | 0.8 |
| 11 | Hawkeye Community College Waterloo, IA Public · 2-year | $62,551 | 42 | $11,000 | $9,649 | 0.8 |
| 12 | Mount Wachusett Community College Gardner, MA Public · 2-year | $60,626 | 37 † | $11,961 | $7,931 | 0.8 |
| 13 | Diablo Valley College Pleasant Hill, CA Public · 2-year | $59,444 | 33 † | — | $8,312 | 0.7 |
| 14 | Hill College Hillsboro, TX Public · 2-year | $59,294 | 29 † | — | $7,577 | 0.6 |
| 15 | Morton College Cicero, IL Public · 2-year | $58,179 | 26 † | — | $5,191 | 0.5 |
| 16 | Middlesex Community College Bedford, MA Public · 2-year | $58,029 | 56 | $8,694 | $2,624 | 0.3 |
| 17 | Bethel University (TN) McKenzie, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,864 | 32 † | $17,250 | $12,595 | 1.1 |
| 18 | Park University Parkville, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,202 | 27 † | — | $21,032 | 1.9 |
| 19 | Salt Lake Community College Salt Lake City, UT Public · 2-year | $57,197 | 58 | $8,238 | $9,804 | 1.1 |
| 20 | Oakland Community College Auburn Hills, MI Public · 2-year | $56,926 | 37 † | $12,972 | $5,777 | 0.5 |
| 21 | De Anza College Cupertino, CA Public · 4-year | $56,754 | 30 † | — | $6,642 | 0.7 |
| 22 | Montgomery County Community College Blue Bell, PA Public · 2-year | $56,410 | 32 † | $12,608 | $11,124 | 1.1 |
| 23 | North Shore Community College Danvers, MA Public · 2-year | $56,407 | 73 | $7,449 | $9,000 | 1.2 |
| 24 | Central Maine Community College Auburn, ME Public · 2-year | $56,407 | 30 † | $9,378 | $6,975 | 0.8 |
| 25 | Indiana Wesleyan University-Marion Marion, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,400 | 29 † | $24,250 | $22,866 | 2.3 |
| 26 | Bunker Hill Community College Boston, MA Public · 2-year | $56,211 | 57 | — | $7,818 | 1.0 |
| 27 | College of San Mateo San Mateo, CA Public · 2-year | $55,857 | 44 | — | $536 | 0.1 |
| 28 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $55,726 | 58 | $24,003 | $9,597 | 0.9 |
| 29 | Mott Community College Flint, MI Public · 2-year | $55,644 | 26 † | $14,229 | $5,687 | 0.5 |
| 30 | Schenectady County Community College Schenectady, NY Public · 2-year | $55,533 | 35 † | — | $8,947 | 0.9 |
| 31 | Portland Community College Portland, OR Public · 2-year | $55,469 | 37 † | $18,584 | $10,405 | 1.1 |
| 32 | Schoolcraft Community College District Livonia, MI Public · 4-year | $55,436 | 69 | $10,500 | $2,260 | 0.2 |
| 33 | Post University Waterbury, CT For-profit · 4-year | $55,105 | 52 | $29,745 | $21,634 | 2.5 |
| 34 | Massasoit Community College Brockton, MA Public · 2-year | $54,915 | 73 | $9,725 | $8,460 | 1.2 |
| 35 | Community College of Baltimore County Baltimore, MD Public · 2-year | $54,798 | 38 † | $10,975 | $9,844 | 1.1 |
| 36 | Rowan College at Burlington County Mount Laurel, NJ Public · 2-year | $54,770 | 67 | $9,750 | $5,344 | 0.6 |
| 37 | Ferris State University Big Rapids, MI Public · 4-year | $54,494 | 131 | $18,357 | $8,624 | 0.9 |
| 38 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $54,243 | 188 | $10,250 | $7,095 | 0.8 |
| 39 | College of the Canyons Santa Clarita, CA Public · 4-year | $54,179 | 35 † | — | $3,702 | 0.4 |
| 40 | Delta College University Center, MI Public · 2-year | $54,029 | 49 | $8,291 | $4,547 | 0.5 |
| 41 | Orange County Community College Middletown, NY Public · 2-year | $53,827 | 39 † | $13,303 | $6,794 | 0.8 |
| 42 | Liberty University Lynchburg, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $53,803 | 66 | $27,193 | $29,357 | 3.4 |
| 43 | Southern Maine Community College South Portland, ME Public · 2-year | $53,650 | 53 | $9,414 | $11,086 | 1.4 |
| 44 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $53,577 | 37 † | $13,000 | $21,637 | 2.5 |
| 45 | Southeast Technical College Sioux Falls, SD Public · 2-year | $53,522 | 29 † | — | $17,400 | 2.1 |
| 46 | Hudson County Community College Jersey City, NJ Public · 2-year | $53,471 | 32 † | — | $7,307 | 0.9 |
| 47 | Del Mar College Corpus Christi, TX Public · 4-year | $53,377 | 34 † | — | $3,399 | 0.4 |
| 48 | NHTI-Concord's Community College Concord, NH Public · 2-year | $53,374 | 51 | $12,000 | $18,011 | 3.2 |
| 49 | St Clair County Community College Port Huron, MI Public · 2-year | $53,314 | 29 † | — | $5,571 | 0.6 |
| 50 | Rockland Community College Suffern, NY Public · 2-year | $53,294 | 69 | $8,500 | $11,282 | 1.3 |
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 Criminal Justice (CIP 4301, 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 190.
- 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 Criminal Justice 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 | $64,621 | 7 | Alexandria Technical & Community College |
| Michigan | $54,494 | 9 | Grand Rapids Community College |
| Virginia | $53,803 | 3 | Northern Virginia Community College |
| Massachusetts | $52,309 | 11 | Mount Wachusett Community College |
| Missouri | $51,001 | 6 | Jefferson College |
| South Dakota | $49,741 | 4 | Southeast Technical College |
| Ohio | $48,290 | 3 | Ohio University-Main Campus |
| New Jersey | $47,993 | 14 | Rowan College at Burlington County |
| Pennsylvania | $47,838 | 12 | Montgomery County Community College |
| Florida | $47,269 | 5 | Indian River State College |
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