Here are the best colleges and universities in Oregon. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
Oregon is home to over 40 higher education institutions, including Oregon State University, the largest in the state. More than 30,000 students are enrolled at this public research institution in Corvallis, and with a tuition of $11,000, the school comes in slightly above the national average. Students attending the next largest, the University of Oregon, will join in on a friendly intrastate rivalry against Oregon State. Though the tuition is higher at $12,000, the school boasts a student–faculty ratio of 16:1.
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Of the 21 private institutions, 10 are religiously based. Concordia University has the largest student population at just under 5,000 and a tuition of $31,000. Students who attend this private Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod university can study fields such as chemistry, psychology, and history. Oregon’s community colleges range in tuition from $4,000 to $6,000. The least expensive four-year institution in the state, Portland State University (PSU), comes in at $8,000. Students attending PSU can study a range of fields, including environmental engineering, film, and international business, right in the heart of the city.
Gaze at the Pacific Ocean from the Oregon Coast Highway, which travels along the entire coastal edge of the state. Taste Pacific Northwest wines from the Willamette Valley, or take a bike ride through the streets of Portland. Students looking to earn their associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in The Beaver State can enjoy a great higher education experience set against a stunning natural backdrop.
Discover what Oregon has to offer, and find a college that fits your career interests as well as your budget.
Related: Differences between research universities and teaching colleges
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 17 colleges and universities in Oregon that meet our criteria. This list of the top colleges in Oregon below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Oregon.
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
74%
Student body
21K
Median SAT/ACT
1205/25
University of Oregon’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$63K
Acceptance
42%
Graduation
77%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1422/32
Reed College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
69%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1200/24
Oregon State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
95%
Graduation
49%
Student body
19K
Median SAT/ACT
1110/21
Portland State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
74%
Student body
2K
Willamette University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
84%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/26
University of Portland’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$57K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
74%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1310/29
Lewis & Clark College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
90%
Graduation
47%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1090/21
Southern Oregon University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
45%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1060/20
Western Oregon University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
89%
Graduation
64%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/23
Pacific University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
28%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1037/20
Eastern Oregon University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
95%
Graduation
51%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1100/23
Oregon Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$46K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
75%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
Linfield University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
66%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/23
George Fox University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
48%
Graduation
50%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/22
Corban University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
51%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1081/19
Bushnell University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$20K
Acceptance
100%
Graduation
38%
Student body
<1K
Warner Pacific 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.