Associate Degree
An associate degree is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by community colleges, junior colleges, technical colleges, and bachelor's degree-granting colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study usually taking about two years. A traditional associate degree program consists of three parts: general education requirements, major requirements, and electives. Two earn one of the two associate degrees offered by the Social Sciences Division you have to complete a minimum of 64 credits.
An associate degree has two main purposes. It can either be earned as a career preparation degree or as the first half of a bachelor's degree.
In the first case, the associate degree might be called a terminal degree or occupational degree, because it is designed to prepare you for immediate employment. In other words, as a career preparation degree, an associate degree stands on its own. Not all jobs require students to have an bachelor degree. Thus, an associate degree enables students to learn the required skill set for a specific job without having to spend four years in college. This is not to say that students with associate degrees cannot change their minds later on and use their earned credits towards further educational goals.
In the second case, the associate degree serves as a kind of transfer degree. Transfer degrees are usually less career-focused than terminal/occupational degrees. They enable you to transfer into a a full, 4-year program in the same or another institution. In this sense, the associated degree can be used as a stepping stone for further education and allows students to test the waters before committing to a longer academic parcourse.
Currently, we are offering two Associate Degree and one Associate of Applied Science degrees:
CTE-AAS