Public colleges and universities account for almost 75 percent of all undergraduate students in the U.S. The best public colleges in Florida provide broad access to reputable degree programs, affordable tuition, and sprawling educational communities.
Coming in under the national tuition average at $6,360, Florida’s colleges and universities make earning your degree affordable. Prospective students in Florida can choose from 40 public and 50 private colleges that award associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in fields like anthropology, nursing, law, religious studies, and earth sciences. Nearly 40 colleges and universities in Florida offer online degrees that provide extra flexibility for educational opportunities. With over 165,000 students across eight campuses and 21 outreach centers, Miami Dade College is the largest public college in the state with a tuition of $3,000.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Students seeking a religious school can choose from 21 colleges and universities that are grounded in Judeo-Christian, Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, and Christian principals. Ranked as the top two schools, the University of Florida (UF) and Florida State University (FSU) both have large student populations, with just over 45,000 at UF and just under 39,000 as FSU. Both are also affordable, with tuition at $6,000 and $7,000, respectively.
At $50,000, the University of Miami is the most expensive private college in the state and has graduated influential people, such as Gene Roddenberry, Sylvester Stallone, and Dwayne The Rock
Johnson. Florida also offers its nursing students up to $4,000 in loan forgiveness through their Nursing Student Loan Forgiveness Program.
Coastal cities, sandy beaches, orange groves, and vibrant flowers — it’s no wonder Florida is called The Sunshine State. Home to the famous Everglades National Park and Disney World, Florida also boasts 90 higher education institutes.
With so many options and in such a beautiful setting, Florida has a lot to offer higher education students. Check out Florida’s best degree programs and top career paths.
Public and private colleges and universities operate under different business models. Public colleges and universities are owned by the state and receive both state and federal funding to operate. Private colleges and universities are private companies with private funding. If you’re looking at the pros and cons of private vs. public colleges, consider that many public colleges provide diverse course offerings, influential professors, and an excellent return on your investment.
Public colleges are schools that receive most of their funding from tax revenues. As a result, the cost of a bachelor’s degree at a public university is often lower than the equivalent cost at a private college — especially for students attending a public school in their home state. Attending a college in-state is usually the cheapest option. Private universities and colleges can be very competitive with their funding opportunities, so do not simply believe that private colleges are always going to be more expensive. According to National Center for Educational Statistics, the average annual cost (tuition, fees, room and board for full-time students) at a public university was slightly over $20,000. In contrast, private universities cost, on average, nearly $43,000 annually. But in the end, the cost of college comes down to each student’s academic and financial situation.
This list is composed entirely of public colleges and universities that offer bachelor’s degrees. We’ve identified 38 public universities in Florida. The list below of the 25 best public universities in Florida. To be included, shcools must receive direct funding from the state, be fully accredited, and offer a broad range of bachelor’s degress.
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.
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
31%
Graduation
89%
Student body
47K
Median SAT/ACT
1390/30
University of Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
32%
Graduation
84%
Student body
40K
Median SAT/ACT
1270/28
Florida State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
45%
Graduation
74%
Student body
60K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
University of Central Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
49%
Graduation
74%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/27
University of South Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
67%
Student body
48K
Median SAT/ACT
1195/25
Florida International University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
56%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/24
Florida Atlantic University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
33%
Graduation
55%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1095/21
Florida A&M University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
66%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1175/22
University of North Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
48%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/25
University of West Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
64%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1270/28
New College of Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
33%
Student body
45K
Miami Dade College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
44%
Student body
34K
Valencia College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
53%
Student body
13K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
Florida Gulf Coast University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
35%
Student body
27K
Broward College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
53%
Student body
11K
Santa Fe College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
33%
Student body
19K
St. Petersburg College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
39%
Student body
9K
Tallahassee Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
37%
Student body
11K
Florida SouthWestern State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
43%
Student body
10K
Daytona State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
43%
Student body
11K
Indian River State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
47%
Student body
12K
Seminole State College of Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
40%
Student body
17K
Florida State College at Jacksonville’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
49%
Student body
1K
Chipola College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
44%
Student body
21K
Palm Beach State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
47%
Student body
11K
Eastern Florida State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
33%
Student body
4K
Northwest Florida State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Many of our 2022 undergraduate focused rankings look considerably different than 2021. That’s because we took a fundamentally different apporach. For 2021 we utiulized our Concentrated Influence algorithm, designed to take away the size advantage larger schools have when we rank their faculty and alumni’s academic influence. Concentrated influence highlights smaller schools that are proportionally as successful as larger universities at cultivating influential alumni and faculty.
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