Best Community Colleges in Missouri 2024

Badge for BEST IN MISSOURI COMMUNITY COLLEGES

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 Missouri 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.

Moberly Area Community College
St. Charles Community College
Ozarks Technical Community College
Mineral Area College
North Central Missouri College
Crowder College
State Fair Community College
Jefferson College
East Central College
Missouri State University–West Plains

Moberly Area Community College 25 to 1
Three Rivers College 22 to 1
Mineral Area College 20 to 1
North Central Missouri College 19 to 1
St. Charles Community College 19 to 1
St. Louis Community College–Forest Park 18 to 1
State Fair Community College 17 to 1
Ozarks Technical Community College 16 to 1
Jefferson College 15 to 1
East Central College 14 to 1

Jefferson College $5,310
Moberly Area Community College $5,220
Mineral Area College $5,130
St. Charles Community College $5,010
North Central Missouri College $4,740
St. Louis Community College–Forest Park $4,440
State Fair Community College $4,392
Three Rivers College $4,290
Missouri State University–West Plains $4,230
Ozarks Technical Community College $4,104

St. Louis Community College–Forest Park
Three Rivers College
Missouri State University–West Plains
East Central College
Jefferson College
St. Charles Community College
Crowder College
State Fair Community College
Mineral Area College
North Central Missouri College

Three Rivers College
St. Louis Community College–Forest Park
Missouri State University–West Plains
East Central College
Jefferson College
State Fair Community College
Crowder College
North Central Missouri College
Mineral Area College
Ozarks Technical Community College

Missouri State University–West Plains 13 to 1
Crowder College 13 to 1
East Central College 14 to 1
Jefferson College 15 to 1
Ozarks Technical Community College 16 to 1
State Fair Community College 17 to 1
St. Louis Community College–Forest Park 18 to 1
North Central Missouri College 19 to 1
St. Charles Community College 19 to 1
Mineral Area College 20 to 1

East Central College $3,864
Crowder College $3,984
Ozarks Technical Community College $4,104
Missouri State University–West Plains $4,230
Three Rivers College $4,290
State Fair Community College $4,392
St. Louis Community College–Forest Park $4,440
North Central Missouri College $4,740
St. Charles Community College $5,010
Mineral Area College $5,130

Colleges and Universities in Missouri

Tuition costs in Missouri fall below the national average, allowing students access to many affordable options. For example, at Missouri State University, the second largest public school, tuition fees are around $7,000. Students of actor John Goodman’s alma mater can major in fields like religious studies, history, and business, and even have the option of earning an associate degree in arts or a bachelor’s in business at the university’s sister school in China. Missouri also offers more than 40 private schools.

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Tuition and student populations vary greatly among these schools, but students who attend these higher education institutes also have the option to attend classes at other campuses. For example, Saint Louis University, a college with Jesuit roots, has campuses in both St. Louis and Madrid, Spain. Additionally, Missouri offers special loan forgiveness programs for nurses and other health professionals, including dentists, psychiatrists, and primary care physicians, who work in designated, high-need areas.

When you aren’t exploring one of its 6,000 caves, chowing down on some barbecue, or taking in a live jazz performance, Missouri can serve as the perfect place to begin a road trip. The Show Me State is bordered by eight other U.S. states, making it ideal for students love travelling and planning weekend getaways. During the week days, students can continue on their road to success by pursuing their degree at one of Missouri’s 72 higher education institutes.

See where Missouri’s many roads can take you while earning your degree at one this state’s top learning institutions.

What are Missouri’s Colleges & Universities?

Missouri’s Best Overall

How do we determine Missouri'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 12 community colleges in Missouri. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Missouri.