The 10 best community colleges in Illinois

Having taught full- and/or part-time at three of these schools, I like to think that yes, they are very high quality institutions.

“To say that the state of Illinois places a high value on its community colleges would be something of an understatement. The very first junior college nationwide was founded there in 1901, born out of the desire to provide a pathway to higher education students who wanted to stay in their communities after graduating from high school, and that first institution has grown into a statewide system that includes 48 schools in 39 community college districts.

In order to figure out which ones among those 48 institutions could be called the best community colleges in Illinois, we developed a system of metrics to analyze seven categories of data released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and other independent agencies. We looked at total attendance cost, student-faculty ratio, distance education focus and transfer rate to four-year institutions, among other factors, and we came up with a pretty clear who’s-who of top Illinois community colleges.

You can read about our methodology in more detail at the bottom of the page, if you’re curious about the full list of metrics and the specific weights assigned to each of them. Without any further ado, however, let’s get down to business — here are the 10 best community colleges in Illinois and a brief summary of the noteworthy features of each one.”

Read the full story at schools.com