Education is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #12 most popular associate degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Education Associate Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 256 associate degrees in education to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Education School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of education for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality education program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their associate degree from the school. After all, your associate degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of education students who choose to seek a associate degree at the school.
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 education 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 education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for education students working on their associate degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Education Associate Degree Schools in Tennessee list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Associate Students to Study Education in Tennessee
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing an associate degree in education.
Top Tennessee Schools for an Associate in Education
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).