Medical assistant associate degree

No. You don't need a degree to enter the field. Most medical assistants finish some kind of training after high school, like a certificate or an associate degree, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes.

That same source describes the typical starting education as a postsecondary nondegree award. In plain terms, that means a certificate or diploma rather than a full college degree. Many employers favor applicants with more schooling, and some medical assistants pick up the skills while working.

Programs at vocational and technical schools, community colleges, and universities usually run about 1 to 2 years.

When it comes to certification, the name of the award counts less than accreditation. Accreditation means an independent group reviewed the program and gave its approval. CAAHEP and ABHES are the 2 main groups that do this for medical assisting.

If your program was accredited by CAAHEP or ABHES, you're eligible to take the CMA (AAMA) exam, no matter which type of award you earned. This credential is a national certification for medical assistants. The American Association of Medical Assistants also offers an alternative route to certification, and under that route the program you completed can grant any of these awards: a diploma, a certificate, or an associate degree.

Our site has 1,094 programs in total. Of these, 484 hold CAAHEP or ABHES accreditation. 310 are accredited by CAAHEP and 181 are at ABHES-accredited schools, and some programs have both, so the two numbers add up to more than 484.

Among 378 career schools reporting medical assisting program lengths, the median is 9 months. Programs range from 2 to 32 months, and these figures are not specific to associate degrees. These numbers come from federal education statistics covering 2023 to 2024.

Schools report prices in 2 ways, so the figures can't be lined up side by side. At 392 career schools that charge for the full program, tuition, fees and books had a median cost of $17,257. At 437 public colleges, one year of full-time study had a median in-district tuition and fees of $4,346.

Most schools on our list accept federal student aid, 1,049 of them. That means government help paying for school, like grants and loans.

Medical assistants earned a median of $45,690 a year in May 2025, which works out to about $21.97 per hour. Here is how that wage compares with similar healthcare roles, with all figures from May 2025 and drawing on the same federal source.