Posted by: Adam McCann

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

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	Washington		26	Oklahoma
2	South Dakota		27	Missouri
3	Minnesota		28	New Hampshire
4	Colorado		29	Nebraska
5	Arkansas		30	Arizona
6	Maryland		31	Kansas
7	New York		32	Louisiana
8	Wyoming		33	Texas
9	Kentucky		34	Virginia
10	Tennessee		35	Connecticut
11	New Jersey		36	Idaho
12	Mississippi		37	Massachusetts
13	Hawaii		38	North Carolina
14	Iowa		39	South Carolina
15	Montana		40	Illinois
16	West Virginia		41	Ohio
17	Oregon		42	Pennsylvania
18	California		N/A	Alaska
19	New Mexico		N/A	Delaware
20	North Dakota		N/A	Florida
21	Maine		N/A	Indiana
22	Alabama		N/A	Nevada
23	Georgia		N/A	Rhode Island
24	Wisconsin		N/A	Utah
25	Michigan		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 2019’s Best & Worst Community Colleges, which was conducted at the individual-school level across a sample of 710 institutions and 19 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.

 

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

Image: Tyler Olson / Shutterstock.com

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