Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) earn a median of $37,656 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $24,793 and $49,794. We rank the 66 U.S. colleges whose Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 4,447 graduates in all. That puts Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) at #25 of 27 associate degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Raritan Valley Community College, in New Jersey, leads at $58,335, 47% above the median ranked school ($39,597). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $36,217 and $44,367, and the lowest earns $24,632. 43 of the 66 ranked schools (65%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 19 public, 1 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 95% are public. Texas places 11 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $6,601 a year, against $7,095 across all 66 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $10,475 in federal loans, about 22% 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 66 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Raritan Valley Community College Branchburg, NJ Public · 2-year | $58,335 | 28 † | — | $6,778 | 0.6 |
| 2 | Tarrant County College District Fort Worth, TX Public · 2-year | $55,136 | 108 | $9,750 | $4,337 | 0.4 |
| 3 | San Jacinto Community College Pasadena, TX Public · 4-year | $54,018 | 170 | $11,250 | $12,143 | 1.3 |
| 4 | Lone Star College System The Woodlands, TX Public · 4-year | $53,830 | 113 | $7,687 | $11,252 | 1.2 |
| 5 | College of Southern Nevada Las Vegas, NV Public · 4-year | $52,719 | 93 | $8,062 | $6,615 | 0.8 |
| 6 | Collin County Community College District McKinney, TX Public · 4-year | $52,314 | 47 | $8,614 | $8,969 | 1.0 |
| 7 | Austin Community College District Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $51,880 | 94 | $10,450 | $6,390 | 0.7 |
| 8 | Dallas College Dallas, TX Public · 4-year | $51,714 | 163 | $10,500 | $3,214 | 0.4 |
| 9 | Odessa College Odessa, TX Public · 4-year | $49,754 | 37 † | — | $6,368 | 0.9 |
| 10 | Camden County College Blackwood, NJ Public · 2-year | $48,628 | 62 | $9,625 | $5,996 | 1.0 |
| 11 | Northwest Vista College San Antonio, TX Public · 4-year | $48,330 | 102 | $5,250 | $4,525 | 0.7 |
| 12 | Leeward Community College Pearl City, HI Public · 2-year | $48,181 | 31 † | — | $5,137 | 0.9 |
| 13 | Navarro College Corsicana, TX Public · 4-year | $47,911 | 61 | $12,000 | $14,820 | 2.3 |
| 14 | North Central Texas College Gainesville, TX Public · 2-year | $45,900 | 35 † | — | $6,587 | 1.2 |
| 15 | Salt Lake Community College Salt Lake City, UT Public · 2-year | $45,017 | 31 † | $11,049 | $9,804 | 3.0 |
| 16 | Oklahoma City Community College Oklahoma City, OK Public · 2-year | $44,727 | 25 † | — | $4,739 | 1.0 |
| 17 | Northern Essex Community College Haverhill, MA Public · 2-year | $44,547 | 31 † | $10,758 | $6,046 | 3.5 |
| 18 | Tyler Junior College Tyler, TX Public · 4-year | $43,827 | 60 | $11,000 | $10,206 | 2.3 |
| 19 | Urban College of Boston Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 2-year | $43,664 | 56 | — | $6,957 | 5.3 |
| 20 | Community College of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Public · 2-year | $42,541 | 55 | $11,000 | $11,911 | 3.9 |
| 21 | College of Southern Idaho Twin Falls, ID Public · 4-year | $42,109 | 31 † | $6,516 | $6,095 | 2.2 |
| 22 | Cochise County Community College District Sierra Vista, AZ Public · 4-year | $41,934 | 49 | — | $7,929 | 2.9 |
| 23 | College of Western Idaho Nampa, ID Public · 4-year | $41,881 | 33 † | $8,262 | $8,500 | 3.2 |
| 24 | Northern Wyoming Community College District Sheridan, WY Public · 4-year | $41,644 | 28 † | — | $9,346 | 6.9 |
| 25 | Connecticut State Community College New Britain, CT Public · 2-year | $41,621 | 118 | — | $11,513 | 5.9 |
| 26 | Northampton County Area Community College Bethlehem, PA Public · 2-year | $41,092 | 45 | $15,047 | $12,119 | 5.3 |
| 27 | Amarillo College Amarillo, TX Public · 2-year | $40,796 | 93 | $16,000 | $4,600 | 1.5 |
| 28 | Delaware County Community College Media, PA Public · 2-year | $40,779 | 61 | $10,500 | $6,576 | 3.1 |
| 29 | Tallahassee State College Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $40,414 | 30 † | $13,175 | $7,781 | 2.6 |
| 30 | Community College of Vermont Montpelier, VT Public · 2-year | $40,214 | 46 | — | $13,696 | 9.2 |
| 31 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $39,960 | 76 | $17,500 | $14,471 | 8.4 |
| 32 | Rose State College Midwest City, OK Public · 4-year | $39,791 | 28 † | $9,500 | $12,148 | 4.9 |
| 33 | Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Perkinston, MS Public · 2-year | $39,724 | 54 | $10,960 | $6,962 | 1.6 |
| 34 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $39,470 | 43 | $12,000 | $24,022 | 14.2 |
| 35 | San Antonio College San Antonio, TX Public · 4-year | $39,214 | 70 | — | $4,585 | 2.1 |
| 36 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $39,105 | 42 | $6,500 | $7,095 | 4.2 |
| 37 | Bucks County Community College Newtown, PA Public · 2-year | $39,031 | 28 † | $14,888 | $6,389 | 5.0 |
| 38 | Palo Alto College San Antonio, TX Public · 4-year | $38,409 | 77 | $10,142 | $4,463 | 2.5 |
| 39 | Delaware Technical Community College-Terry Dover, DE Public · 4-year | $38,352 | 88 | $6,875 | $11,578 | — |
| 40 | Bristol Community College Fall River, MA Public · 2-year | $38,346 | 31 † | $6,306 | $5,547 | — |
| 41 | Northwest Mississippi Community College Senatobia, MS Public · 2-year | $38,015 | 34 † | — | $7,911 | 2.2 |
| 42 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $37,898 | 108 | $13,447 | $25,648 | — |
| 43 | Essex County College Newark, NJ Public · 2-year | $37,715 | 66 | — | $4,436 | — |
| 44 | Montgomery County Community College Blue Bell, PA Public · 2-year | $37,654 | 59 | $12,250 | $11,124 | — |
| 45 | Middlesex Community College Bedford, MA Public · 2-year | $37,535 | 27 † | — | $2,624 | — |
| 46 | Jefferson College Hillsboro, MO Public · 2-year | $37,268 | 34 † | — | $7,378 | 6.0 |
| 47 | Central Piedmont Community College Charlotte, NC Public · 2-year | $37,153 | 36 † | — | $3,345 | 2.2 |
| 48 | Carl Albert State College Poteau, OK Public · 2-year | $36,542 | 37 † | — | $14,607 | — |
| 49 | The University of Arizona Global Campus Chandler, AZ Public · 4-year | $36,261 | 345 | $24,750 | — | — |
| 50 | Holmes Community College Goodman, MS Public · 2-year | $36,202 | 67 | $5,500 | $5,643 | 2.1 |
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 Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) (CIP 1312, 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 66.
- 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 Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | $48,628 | 3 | Raritan Valley Community College |
| Texas | $46,906 | 18 | Tarrant County College District |
| Pennsylvania | $40,370 | 6 | Community College of Philadelphia |
| Massachusetts | $38,346 | 5 | Northern Essex Community College |
| Oklahoma | $38,167 | 4 | Oklahoma City Community College |
| Ohio | $37,898 | 3 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus |
| Mississippi | $36,202 | 5 | Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College |
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