Best Community Colleges in Kentucky 2024

Published: Mar 25, 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 Kentucky 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.

10 Best Community Colleges in Kentucky

Bluegrass Community and Technical College
West Kentucky Community and Technical College
Ashland Community and Technical College
Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College
Henderson Community College
Jefferson Community and Technical College
Gateway Community and Technical College
Hazard Community and Technical College
Somerset Community College

Jefferson Community and Technical College 23 to 1
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College 22 to 1
Owensboro Community and Technical College 19 to 1
Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College 19 to 1
Maysville Community and Technical College 18 to 1
Bluegrass Community and Technical College 18 to 1
Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College 17 to 1
Gateway Community and Technical College 17 to 1
Ashland Community and Technical College 16 to 1
Hopkinsville Community College 16 to 1

Jefferson Community and Technical College $4,296
Ashland Community and Technical College $4,296
Hazard Community and Technical College $4,296
Madisonville Community College $4,296
Henderson Community College $4,296
Big Sandy Community and Technical College $4,296
Hopkinsville Community College $4,296
Owensboro Community and Technical College $4,296
West Kentucky Community and Technical College $4,296
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College $4,296

Maysville Community and Technical College
Hopkinsville Community College
Owensboro Community and Technical College
Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College
Big Sandy Community and Technical College
Madisonville Community College
Somerset Community College
Hazard Community and Technical College
Gateway Community and Technical College
Jefferson Community and Technical College

Madisonville Community College 14 to 1
Hazard Community and Technical College 15 to 1
Henderson Community College 15 to 1
Big Sandy Community and Technical College 15 to 1
Ashland Community and Technical College 16 to 1
Hopkinsville Community College 16 to 1
West Kentucky Community and Technical College 16 to 1
Somerset Community College 16 to 1
Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College 17 to 1
Gateway Community and Technical College 17 to 1

Jefferson Community and Technical College $4,296
Ashland Community and Technical College $4,296
Hazard Community and Technical College $4,296
Madisonville Community College $4,296
Henderson Community College $4,296
Big Sandy Community and Technical College $4,296
Hopkinsville Community College $4,296
Owensboro Community and Technical College $4,296
West Kentucky Community and Technical College $4,296
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College $4,296

Colleges and Universities in Kentucky

Students who wish to attend traditional and online colleges in Kentucky have plenty of excellent options. Traditional students and distance learners alike have an array of affordable, accessible, and reputable undergraduate and graduate degrees to choose from.

Between community colleges, technical schools, and universities, Kentucky has 24 public schools. The community colleges and technical schools average $4,000 for tuition, and tuition for public universities ranges from $8,000 to $12,000. Online students pay the same in state tuition rates when enrolling in these public options.

Prospective students planning to attend private colleges can choose from 26 schools, of which 21 are religiously affiliated. The cost to attend private schools tends to be higher, reaching $42,000 in Kentucky. There are, however, some affordable private options with tuition rates as low as $9,000.

Find college admissions consultants in your state.

The largest and top-rated public university is the University of Kentucky. The University of Kentucky has over 30,000 students and costs about $12,000. UK offers a wide range of traditional and fully online programs in areas like political science, chemistry, and literature.

Students who attend either the University of Louisville or Western Kentucky University will become part of a friendly basketball rivalry. Both of these universities also offer highly regarded graduate and undergraduate degrees in fields like mathematics, communications, business, and history.

Eastern Kentucky University is also among the top public colleges in Kentucky, with more than 14,000 students enrolled in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs.

In addition, Kentucky encourages graduating education students to apply for the Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program. This financial aid program awards $5,000 to $17,500 toward Federal Stafford loans to those remaining in the profession.

There is something for everyone in The Bluegrass State. Kentucky is home to the famous Kentucky Derby, the Daniel Boone National Forest, and the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. Both traditional and online Students wanting to study in a state that Abraham Lincoln and Muhammad Ali called home have 50 higher learning institutions from which to choose.

Kentucky has it all - associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Check out the top brick-and-mortar and online schools the state of Kentucky has to offer.

What are Kentucky’s Colleges & Universities?

Kentucky’s Best Overall

How do we determine Kentucky'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 16 community colleges in Kentucky. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Kentucky.

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

Best Community Colleges in Kentucky

Build your own college rankings

2021 Ranking Archive

Many of our 2022 undergraduate focused rankings look considerably different than 2021. That’s because we took a fundamentally different apporach. For 2021 we utilized 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.

Ask A Question

Are you a student who has questions about this topic? Submit your question below to have one of our expert team members answer it for you! (Questions will be posted with their answers directly to this article, and we'll notify you when yours is answered!)