Public colleges and universities account for almost 75 percent of all undergraduate students in the U.S. The best public colleges in Missouri provide broad access to reputable degree programs, affordable tuition, and sprawling educational communities.
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.
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 13 public universities in Missouri. To be included in our list of the best public colleges in Missouri, 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
$11K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
73%
Student body
25K
Median SAT/ACT
1230/26
University of Missouri’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
67%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1325/29
Missouri University of Science and Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
54%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
University of Missouri–Kansas City’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
72%
Graduation
75%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/27
Truman State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
54%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1119/22
Northwest Missouri State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
58%
Student body
17K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/24
Missouri State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
51%
Student body
9K
University of Central Missouri’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
56%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/24
University of Missouri–St. Louis’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
93%
Graduation
51%
Student body
9K
Southeast Missouri State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
36%
Student body
4K
Missouri Western State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
98%
Graduation
32%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
990/21
Missouri Southern State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Graduation
26%
Student body
2K
Lincoln University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
12%
Student body
1K
Harris–Stowe State University’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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