2023 Best Value Public & Social Service Associate Degree Schools in California

Identifying Quality Schools at More Affordable Prices

Finding the Best Public Administration & Social Service Associate Degree School for You

With 8,979 degrees and certificates handed out in 2020-2021, public administration and social service is the #16 most popular major in California.

When it comes to higher education, there are a lot of options for students. You can choose a traditional brick and mortar school, or with the growth of online education, you can attend a school half-way across the country without even leaving your house. Also there are many trade schools that offer short-term programs that open up more career options.

Along with in-depth profiles of schools and the programs they offer, Course Advisor has created the Best Value Public & Social Service Associate Degree Schools in California to help you in your search for the best school for you. Our analysis looked at 3 schools in California to see which associate degree programs offered the best value experiences for public administration and social service students with the aim of identifying those quality schools that are more affordable than some of their counterparts.

This ranking is not just a list of inexpensive schools. We also consider each school's quality, since we believe a low-quality school may not be a 'bargain' at any price. More specifically, we discount our quality score by the published tuition and fees charged by a school. This gives the cost per unit of quality for each college. The value is determined by how much quality your dollar buys.

For nationwide and regional rankings, we use out-of-state tuition and fees in our calculations. Average in-state tuition and fees are used for our statewide rankings.

2023 Best Value Public Administration & Social Service Associate Degree Schools in California

The colleges and universities below are the best value schools for public administration and social service majors pursuing a associate degree.

Best California Schools for Affordable Quality for an Associate in Public & Social Service

Best Value Public Administration & Social Service Colleges in the Far Western US Region

Explore all the Best Value Public Administration & Social Service Colleges in the Far Western US Area or other specific states within that region.

State	Degrees Awarded
Washington	1,252
Oregon	832
Hawaii	396
Nevada	610
Alaska	121

Majors Related to Public Administration & Social Service

Public Administration & Social Service Majors to Study

Major	Annual Graduates
Social Work	58,326
Public Administration	16,905
Human Services	13,238
Public Policy	6,430
Community Organization & Advocacy	3,096
Other Public Administration	588

Most Popular Related Majors

Related Major	Annual Graduates
Homeland Security, Law Enforcement & Firefighting	142,610
Parks, Recreation, Leisure, & Fitness Studies	73,813
Legal Professions	61,055
Military Technologies & Applied Sciences	4,477

Notes and References

*These averages are for the top 3 schools only.

• 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).
• Credit for the banner image above goes to University of the Fraser Valley.

More about our data sources and methodologies.