In a new study by WalletHub, Florida has the fourth best community college system in the U.S.
The study comes at the start of the 2017-18 school year with several states, such as New York and Rhode Island, offering free community-college education. To determine which states have the best and worst community college systems WalletHub compared more than 700 community colleges across 14 key indicators of cost and quality.
The comparison was broken down into two reports, 2017’s States with the Best & Worst Community College Systems and 2017’s Best & Worst Community Colleges. The data collected ranged from cost of in-state tuition and fees to student-faculty ratio to graduation rate.
For the individual state rankings, WalletHub 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 ranked No. 1 or the best community-college system has the highest average.
Furthermore, the study only took into account the states with at least two community colleges.
In the community college break down Florida has two colleges ranking as the best community colleges. North Florida Community College came in 99th and Hillsborough Community College came in 105th out of 728 community colleges.
North Florida Community College ranked 318th in ‘cost and financing,’ 50th in ‘education outcomes,’ and N/A in ‘career outcomes.’
Hillsborough Community College came in 456th in ‘cost and financing,’ 550th in ‘education outcomes,’ and 50th in ‘career outcomes.’