an associate degree in horticulture is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #87 out of 328 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Horticulture Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 124 associate degrees in horticulture during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Choosing a Great Horticulture School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of horticulture for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality horticulture program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their associate degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their associate degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to horticulture students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other horticulture students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt horticulture students go into to obtain their associate degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized horticulture related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for horticulture students working on their associate degree.
The horticulture school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Horticulture Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region.
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Horticulture in the Middle Atlantic Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in horticulture.
Top Middle Atlantic Region Schools for an Associate in Horticulture
Any student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in horticulture needs to check out Pennsylvania College of Technology. Located in the city of Williamsport, Penn College is a public college with a small student population.
Associate students who receive their degree from the horticulture program earn an average of $30,185 in the first couple years of their career.
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).