Best Community Colleges in Iowa 2024

Published: May 6, 2021
Updated: Oct 16, 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 Iowa 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.

Eastern Iowa Community Colleges 25 to 1
North Iowa Area Community College 22 to 1
Des Moines Area Community College 20 to 1
Iowa Western Community College 18 to 1
Kirkwood Community College 18 to 1
Hawkeye Community College 17 to 1
Marshalltown Community College 17 to 1
Iowa Central Community College 17 to 1
Western Iowa Tech Community College 16 to 1
Ellsworth Community College 16 to 1

Southeastern Community College $5,880
Iowa Western Community College $5,820
Hawkeye Community College $5,818
Southwestern Community College $5,670
Northwest Iowa Community College $5,490
Northeast Iowa Community College $5,400
Iowa Central Community College $5,280
Des Moines Area Community College $5,220
Kirkwood Community College $5,208
North Iowa Area Community College $5,153

Northwest Iowa Community College
Marshalltown Community College
Eastern Iowa Community Colleges
North Iowa Area Community College
Southwestern Community College
Western Iowa Tech Community College
Northeast Iowa Community College
Iowa Western Community College
Hawkeye Community College
Indian Hills Community College

Northeast Iowa Community College 12 to 1
Northwest Iowa Community College 13 to 1
Southwestern Community College 14 to 1
Indian Hills Community College 14 to 1
Southeastern Community College 15 to 1
Western Iowa Tech Community College 16 to 1
Ellsworth Community College 16 to 1
Hawkeye Community College 17 to 1
Marshalltown Community College 17 to 1
Iowa Central Community College 17 to 1

Western Iowa Tech Community College $3,912
Eastern Iowa Community Colleges $4,396
Marshalltown Community College $4,416
Ellsworth Community College $4,416
Indian Hills Community College $4,560
North Iowa Area Community College $5,153
Kirkwood Community College $5,208
Des Moines Area Community College $5,220
Iowa Central Community College $5,280
Northeast Iowa Community College $5,400

Colleges and Universities in Iowa

With a large number of both brick-and-mortar and online colleges in Iowa, students have plenty of great schools to choose from.

Iowa’s largest public university, Iowa State University, serves over 30,000 students and offers extra flexibility for both undergraduate and graduate students through a selection of online degree programs in more than 50 academic fields including business administration, psychology, computer science, and more.

The University of Iowa-home of the Hawkeyes-is also home to some of the nation’s top programs in literature, philosophy, and law. The University of Iowa has also been at the forefront of higher education, starting the nation’s first co-educational medical school, as well as being the first public school to grant a law degree to a woman, Mary B. Hickey Wilkinson, in 1873.

Find college admissions consultants in your state.

For prospective students hoping to obtain their degrees at a smaller school, Iowa offers over 40 options to choose from. For a more affordable option, students can pay $4,000 per year for tuition at Indian Hills Community College. Like most community colleges in Georgia, Indian Hills also offers an array of online programs.

At the other end of the spectrum, students will pay up to $52,000 for an academic year at Grinnell College. Furthermore, nearly half of the schools in Iowa are religiously affiliated.

Iowa is often recognized for its agriculture as it produces the most pork and corn in the nation. Equally noteworthy is Iowa’s wealth of one-of-a-kind roadside attractions. From the largest wooden nickel, to the crookedest street, to the Grotto of Redemption, The Hawkeye State is full of wonders. Students in search of curiosities and oddities while earning a degree can attend one of Iowa’s public or private colleges.

Whether you’re looking to earn your associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree, Iowa offers a wealth of on-campus and online learning options. Discover more about Iowa’s top brick-and-mortar and online programs as well as top career paths in the state of Iowa.

What are Iowa’s Colleges & Universities?

Iowa’s Best Overall

How do we determine Iowa'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 15 community colleges in Iowa. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Iowa.

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