Posted by: Richie Bernardo

University education is out of reach for many Americans, especially those from low-income households. But thanks to community colleges, higher education is more accessible than ever. Compared with public four-year institutions, where tuition and fees cost almost three times as much on average, community colleges offer many savings for students.

Some states make community college even more accessible than usual. Multiple states and numerous cities across the U.S. have started “College Promise” programs that give residents free rides to community college. New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Tennessee are some of the states that have joined so far. Such initiatives are proving to be more critical than ever, with college tuition increases outpacing inflation and the need for post-secondary training in most jobs protected to grow through 2020.

Community colleges will be able to help meet that demand. But despite the fact that community colleges offer significant cost advantages, not every state offers schools of the same quality. Drawing on the findings of WalletHub of the best and worst individual community colleges in the U.S., we present a state-by-state ranking of community-college systems below. Read on for the results and a detailed description of our methodology.

1. Main Findings
2. Methodology
3. Resources

Main Findings Embed on your website<iframe src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/15073/college-systems.html" width="556" height="347" frameBorder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="width:556px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="https://ift.tt/2nY13TL>

 

Best Community College Systems

Overall Rank (1 = Best)	State		Overall Rank (1 = Best)	State
1	South Dakota		26	Maine
2	Minnesota		27	Georgia
3	Montana		28	Connecticut
4	Arkansas		29	Oklahoma
5	New York		30	Maryland
6	Kentucky		31	Massachusetts
7	North Dakota		32	Missouri
8	Tennessee		33	North Carolina
9	Oregon		34	Illinois
10	Washington		35	New Jersey
11	Wisconsin		36	Michigan
12	California		37	Alabama
13	Wyoming		38	Ohio
14	Colorado		39	South Carolina
15	Hawaii		40	West Virginia
16	New Hampshire		41	Louisiana
17	Kansas		42	Pennsylvania
18	Nebraska		N/A	Alaska
19	New Mexico		N/A	Delaware
20	Arizona		N/A	Florida
21	Iowa		N/A	Indiana
22	Mississippi		N/A	Nevada
23	Idaho		N/A	Rhode Island
24	Texas		N/A	Utah
25	Virginia		N/A	Vermont

 

Methodology

In order to determine the best and worst community-college systems in the U.S., we drew upon our analysis of 2018’s Best & Worst Community Colleges, which was conducted at the individual-school level across a sample of 715 institutions and 17 key metrics.

For our state-by-state analysis, we calculated a weighted average of the scores earned by the community colleges in each state and the number of students enrolled in each school. The state with the highest average corresponds with a rank of No. 1, or the best community-college system. We also took into account only the states that had at least two community colleges present in our sample of the Best & Worst Community Colleges in order to ensure comparability of results.

 

Resources:

• Summary video with V/O
• Summary video without V/O

 

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the National Center for Education Statistics, US News, U.S. Department of Education, Council for Community and Economic Research and College Measures.

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