2023 Most Focused Associate Degree Colleges for Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries in the Southwest Region

It’s not easy to decide which college to attend when there so many options available for students. Our mission at College Factual is to arm you with as much information as we can to help you make that decision. Our “Schools for an Associate Highly Focused on Pastoral Counseling Major in the Southwest Region” ranking is one tool we have developed to help in this regard.

Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries is the 171st most popular major in the country with 3,465 degrees awarded in 2021-2022. In , pastoral counseling & specialized ministries graduates who were awarded their degree in , earned an average of $31,317 and had an average of $29,032 in loans still to pay off.

Across the Southwest region, there were 739 pastoral counseling & specialized ministries graduates with average earnings and debt of $28,975 and $36,173 respectively. At the associate degree level specifically, there were 34 pastoral counseling & specialized ministries graduates with average earnings and debt of $36,470 and $15,074 respectively.

For this year’s “Schools for an Associate Highly Focused on Pastoral Counseling Major in the Southwest Region” ranking, we looked at 2 colleges that offer a degree in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries. This a ranking of the schools where the largest percentage of students has enrolled in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries.

For more information, check out our ranking methodology.

More Ways to Rank Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Schools

Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we’ve developed the “Schools for an Associate Highly Focused on Pastoral Counseling Major in the Southwest Region” ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.

To further help you make the college decision, we’ve developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you. We encourage you to try it out and pit your favorite colleges and universities head to head! If you don’t have time right now, you can bookmark it for later.

Schools for an Associate Highly Focused on Pastoral Counseling Major in the Southwest Region

The colleges and universities below are the best for southwest region associate degree pastoral counseling students.

Top 2 Most Focused Associate Degree Colleges for Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries in the Southwest Region

1

Southwestern Assemblies of God University
Waxahachie, Texas

Top 25% overall quality in Southwest

You’ll join some of the best and brightest minds around if you attend Southwestern Assemblies of God University. The school came in at #1 for the Schools for an Associate Highly Focused on Pastoral Counseling Major in the Southwest Region. Southwestern Assemblies of God University is a small school located in Waxahachie, Texas that handed out 11 associates’s pastoral counseling degrees in 2021-2022.

The low undergrad student loan default rate of 4.5% is a good sign that students have an easier time paying off their loans than they might at other schools. For comparison, the national default rate is 10.1%.

Read more about Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries at Southwestern Assemblies of God University

2

Howard Payne University
Brownwood, Texas

Out of the 2 schools in the Schools for an Associate Highly Focused on Pastoral Counseling Major in the Southwest Region that were part of this year’s ranking, Howard Payne University landed the #2 spot on the list. Brownwood, Texas is the setting for this small institution of higher learning. The private not-for-profit school handed out associates’s pastoral counseling degrees to 6 students in 2021-2022.

With a undergrad student-to-faculty ratio of 10 to 1, it’s easy to see that the school is committed to helping their undergraduates succeed. The undergrad student loan default rate at the school is 4.2%, which is quite low when compared to the national default rate of 10.1%.

Read more about Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries at Howard Payne University

Notes and References

References

• 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 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).
• Information about the national average student loan default rate is from the U.S. Department of Education and refers to data about the 2016 borrower cohort tracking period for which the cohort default rate (CDR) was 10.1%.

Read more about our data sources and methodologies

Footnotes

• *Avg Salary and Avg 4-Year Grad Rate are for the top schools only.
• Some schools otherwise deserving of recognition may have been removed from this ranking in the event that new data identified post-publication warranted it, or at the request of the school.