Sheldon, Iowa — Northwest Iowa Community College has been named the second-best community college in the whole country in a new ranking.
WalletHub is a personal finance website that is based in Washington, D.C. and owned by Evolution Finance, Inc. Writers there say cost is often a major consideration when choosing a college. And with tuition rates continuing to rise every year — not to mention all the other expenses related to attendance — many would-be students are unable to afford a university education. They say that community colleges offer students the ability to get higher education without having as much financial strain.
They say, “Individual community colleges, however, vary in quality and affordability. To determine where students can receive the best education at the lowest price, WalletHub compared more than 650 community colleges across 19 key indicators of cost and quality. Our data set ranges from the cost of in-state tuition and fees to student-faculty ratio to graduation rate.”
WalletHub officials tell us that in order to determine the best community colleges in the U.S., WalletHub selected a sample of 677 schools from the list of member institutions in the American Association of Community Colleges. They say that due to data limitations, they were not able to include all member schools.
They say that they evaluated the schools based on three key dimensions, including: 1) Cost & Financing, 2) Education Outcomes and 3) Career Outcomes. They constructed the three dimensions using 19 total metrics, each grouped with related metrics in the appropriate category and listed with its corresponding weight. They say they graded each metric on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the best community college.
Finally, they determined each school’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.
Northwest Iowa Community College ranked second in the nation with a 68.4 out of a possible 100. The only school that did better was the State Technical College of Missouri, with a score of 71.02.
