Here are the most affordable colleges and universities in Montana. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you, at a price you can afford.
Montana has 21 higher learning institutions, including 16 public universities and colleges. The largest is Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman. With an affordable tuition of $7,000, MSU enrolls just over 16,000 students. Students can earn their degree in fields like forestry, wildlife biology, theatre, and creative writing. The state is also home to five private schools, three of which are religiously affiliated.
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Carroll College is a Roman Catholic liberal arts college with just over 1,000 students in attendance. The tuition runs about $35,000, the most expensive in the state, and it is located on a hilltop in Helena. Students can choose from 18 schools in Montana with tuitions of $7,000 or less, making Montana an affordable state to earn an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree. The state also offers loan repayment programs, including the Montana NHSC Student Loan Repayment Program, which grants up to $15,000 per year for two years for those in health-related fields.
Hiking through Glacier National Park, exploring the Northern Great Plains, and fishing from one of its many lakes and rivers are just some of the ways to enjoy the natural bounty that Montana has to offer. Visitors and locals can also drive Going-to-the-Sun-Road, a 52-mile highway that ventures through the National Park and crosses into Canada. No matter the outdoor hobby, prospective students are sure to love the scenic backdrop of The Treasure State as they earn their degree.
Check out the best programs Montana has to offer while enjoying the wide-open spaces of Big Sky Country.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why, at the undergraduate level, we rank the best colleges and universities based on what we call “Concentrated Influence”. Concentrated Influence takes the combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers (including faculty and alums) and divides it by the school’s total number of undergraduates.
Using concentrated influence gives small and mid-sized schools an opportunity to shine by taking away the size advantage of larger universities. A small school with proportionately more influential faculty than a large school, whose influence in absolute terms may be bigger, will nonetheless score higher in a concentrated influence ranking. Our approach highlights undergraduate schools that truly rank for excellence, regardless of size.
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.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Find out more about our ranking methodology here.
We’ve identified 6 affordable colleges and universities in Montana, all of which satisfies the following conditions:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
52%
Graduation
47%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/19
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University of Montana Western’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
28%
Student body
3K
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Montana State University Billings’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
35%
Student body
<1K
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Montana State University–Northern’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
44%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/23
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University of Montana’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
60%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1200/24
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Montana State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
97%
Graduation
57%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/23
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Montana Technological University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
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