Best Community Colleges in Mississippi 2024

Published: Apr 13, 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 Mississippi 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 Mississippi

East Mississippi Community College
Hinds Community College
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College
Coahoma Community College
Pearl River Community College
Northwest Mississippi Community College
Mississippi Delta Community College
Itawamba Community College
Holmes Community College
Jones County Junior College

Jones County Junior College 27 to 1
Southwest Mississippi Community College 24 to 1
Northeast Mississippi Community College 22 to 1
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College 21 to 1
Pearl River Community College 21 to 1
Itawamba Community College 20 to 1
Northwest Mississippi Community College 20 to 1
Copiah–Lincoln Community College 20 to 1
East Mississippi Community College 19 to 1
Coahoma Community College 18 to 1

Jones County Junior College $3,750
Northeast Mississippi Community College $3,650
Hinds Community College $3,500
East Mississippi Community College $3,500
Meridian Community College $3,320
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College $3,300
Pearl River Community College $3,250
Northwest Mississippi Community College $3,200
Mississippi Delta Community College $3,090
Coahoma Community College $3,003

Copiah–Lincoln Community College
East Central Community College
Southwest Mississippi Community College
Meridian Community College
Northeast Mississippi Community College
Jones County Junior College
Holmes Community College
Itawamba Community College
Mississippi Delta Community College
Northwest Mississippi Community College

Hinds Community College 15 to 1
Meridian Community College 16 to 1
Holmes Community College 17 to 1
Coahoma Community College 18 to 1
East Central Community College 18 to 1
Mississippi Delta Community College 18 to 1
East Mississippi Community College 19 to 1
Itawamba Community College 20 to 1
Northwest Mississippi Community College 20 to 1
Copiah–Lincoln Community College 20 to 1

Holmes Community College $2,700
East Central Community College $2,860
Itawamba Community College $2,900
Southwest Mississippi Community College $2,980
Copiah–Lincoln Community College $3,000
Coahoma Community College $3,003
Mississippi Delta Community College $3,090
Northwest Mississippi Community College $3,200
Pearl River Community College $3,250
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College $3,300

Colleges and Universities in Mississippi

The majority of the learning institutes in Mississippi are public schools, with the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, being the largest. This university, located in Oxford, boasts alumni like William Faulkner, John Grisham, and James Meredith. Tuition at Ole Miss runs about $9,000, just below the national average. The eight private colleges, all of which have religious affiliations, range in tuition costs from $10,000 at Rust College to $40,000 at Millsaps College.

Find college admissions consultants in your state.

Students who attend these schools have the option to pursue degrees in fields like nursing, business, dentistry, Christian ministry, education, and literature. Additionally, all of these private schools are considered small schools, serving under 5,000 students. Mississippi also offers up to $12,000 of undergraduate loan forgiveness, over the course of four years, for teachers who work in designated shortage areas or who teach in critical shortage subjects, like special education or mathematics.

From Mississippi mud pie to fried chicken, Mississippi brings a whole new meaning to the term comfort food. The Magnolia State is easy on the eyes too. With nearly endless forests spilling over with hickory, pine, and oak trees, the intricate river system, and the Gulf Island National Seashore, Mississippi is a true destination for lovers of outdoor adventure. And students who plan on earning their associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in Mississippi have 31 colleges and universities to choose from.

Explore some of the top schools and career paths Mississippi has to offer.

What are Mississippi’s Colleges & Universities?

Mississippi’s Best Overall

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