How TIME and Statista Determined America's Best Community Colleges of 2027

Detailed summary

For the first time, TIME and Statista are recognizing America’s Best Community Colleges —the top community colleges offering associate degree programs in the U.S. Here's how the…

For the first time, TIME and Statista are recognizing America’s Best Community Colleges—the top community colleges offering associate degree programs in the U.S. Here's how the list was decided.

To be eligible for the list, a community college must fulfill the following requirements:

The list is based on an extensive Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analysis, focusing on five dimensions:

Data on the community colleges’ performance was collected through publicly available sources like IPEDS and College Scorecard. The data was reviewed on its validity to project student outcomes. Based on the results, a score for all five dimensions was calculated for each community college.

The final score was calculated as follows: 30% x Student Success Rate + 30% x Graduates’ Earnings + 20% x Return on Investment + 10% x Diversity + 10% x Campus Resources = final score

All community colleges were benchmarked against one another using the final score. The 250 best-performing community colleges were included in the final list and are listed alphabetically within each state.

Disclaimer: The selection of the community colleges and the definition of the evaluation criteria were based on independent journalistic criteria of TIME and Statista. The evaluation was carried out by the statistics and market research company Statista. TIME and Statista make no claim to the completeness of the community colleges examined. The list only includes community colleges that qualify according to the criteria described in this document. A position in the list is a positive recognition based on research of publicly available data sources at the time. In addition, events after September 17, 2026, were not considered in the analysis.

Opening of the article, excerpted from Time. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.