Best Community Colleges in Arizona 2023

Published: Feb 15, 2021
Updated: Sep 8, 2023

The best community colleges provide an effective springboard into higher education, offering students high-quality two-year degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The top-rated community colleges in Arizona offer a broad selection of associate’s degrees, affordable tuition rates, and strong partnerships with public four-year schools so that students can easily transfer their credits into accredited bachelor’s degree programs.

Rio Salado College 28 to 1
Coconino County Community College 23 to 1
Chandler–Gilbert Community College 22 to 1
Estrella Mountain Community College 19 to 1
Eastern Arizona College 18 to 1
Tohono Oʼodham Community College 17 to 1
Arizona Western College 17 to 1
Yavapai College 17 to 1
Cochise College 17 to 1
Mesa Community College 16 to 1

Coconino County Community College $3,254
Arizona Western College $2,700
Yavapai College $2,600
Central Arizona College $2,580
Cochise College $2,184
Eastern Arizona College $2,160
Pima Community College $2,088
Glendale Community College $2,040
Estrella Mountain Community College $2,040
Phoenix College $2,040

Tohono Oʼodham Community College
Chandler–Gilbert Community College
South Mountain Community College
Coconino County Community College
Estrella Mountain Community College
Paradise Valley Community College
GateWay Community College
Rio Salado College
Northland Pioneer College
Arizona Western College

GateWay Community College 11 to 1
Mohave Community College 12 to 1
Phoenix College 13 to 1
Diné College 13 to 1
Paradise Valley Community College 13 to 1
Northland Pioneer College 14 to 1
South Mountain Community College 14 to 1
Glendale Community College 15 to 1
Central Arizona College 15 to 1
Scottsdale Community College 15 to 1

Tohono Oʼodham Community College $932
Diné College $1,410
Mohave Community College $1,944
Northland Pioneer College $1,948
Glendale Community College $2,040
Estrella Mountain Community College $2,040
Phoenix College $2,040
Rio Salado College $2,040
Mesa Community College $2,040
South Mountain Community College $2,040

Colleges and Universities in Arizona

Both traditional and online students hoping to attend college in Arizona have a lot to choose from. With both in-person and online degrees at every level of education, Arizona offers educational variety and excellence. Students can choose from associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs anywhere in the state.

The state’s largest university, the University of Arizona located in Tucson, offers a competitive tuition rate, at $12,000, for its 39,000 students.Moreover, Arizona’s most affordable schools, such as the tribally-owned Diné College, offer tuition as low as $1,000.

Private schools make up about one third of the higher education institutes in Arizona. Arizona’s private schools offer a comprehensive range of traditional and online degrees from fine arts to naturopathic medicine.

Arizona’s public universities and colleges, such as Northern Arizona University located in Flagstaff, offer both on-campus and online students a variety of study concentrations, including mathematics, education, political science, and psychology. If you’re looking for flexibility, Arizona has 14 colleges and universities offering entirely online degrees.

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Arizona is also home to three religiously affiliated schools: Arizona Christian University, Phoenix Seminary, and International Baptist College. While tuition varies greatly among these three schools, each school provides unique degree programs, such as music ministry at International Baptist College.

Arizona boasts year-round sunshine, the Grand Canyon, award-winning restaurants, and several professional sports teams? With more than 30 colleges and universities to choose from, Arizona allows students to get their degrees while cashing in on some of life’s greatest pleasures.

If you want to experience the state of Arizona while taking some online courses, you may be able to take a hybrid degree program. Many Arizona colleges and universities allow you to earn a degree through a combination of online learning and on-campus courses.

Arizona offers a variety of excellent and affordable colleges and universities for on-campus and online students at the associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree level.

What are Arizona’s Colleges & Universities?

Arizona’s Best Overall

How do we determine Arizona's best community colleges?

Methodology

The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.

Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.

To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.

We’ve identified 21 community colleges in Arizona. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Arizona.

If you’re interested in an online associate degree, visit our best online associate degrees in Alabama page.