Best Community Colleges in Pennsylvania 2025

Badge for BEST IN PENNSYLVANIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Published: Mar 23, 2021
Updated: Nov 15, 2024

Key Takeaways

Twenty schools in Pennsylvania meet our criteria for the best community colleges in the state.
Community colleges offer more affordable tuition rates than a traditional four-year college.
Graduates earning an associate degree in Pennsylvania can often transfer their credits into an accredited bachelor’s degree program.

Table of Contents

10 Best Community Colleges in Pennsylvania in 2025

Community College of Allegheny County
+1
University of Pittsburgh at Titusville
+2
Community College of Philadelphia
+2
Manor College
–3
Bucks County Community College
–2
Northampton Community College
+1
Montgomery County Community College
–1
Harcum College
Delaware County Community College
+3
Westmoreland County Community College
–1

2025 Ranking Update

Our Influence Ranking Engine™ leverages machine learning to track the real-world influence of colleges and universities over time. Below you’ll see which schools gained or lost ground for the 2025 school year.

The Community College of Allegheny County moves up 1 position to the number 1 spot in our 2025 ranking of the best community colleges in Pennsylvania, while the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville and Community College of Philadelphia both move 1 spots to the number 2 and 3 spots.

The Community College of Allegheny County has launched new certificate programs in Building Automation Systems and Front-End Web Development. Additionally, the college has updated existing programs to improve transferability and align with industry standards, such as removing the calculus requirement from the Business, TAOC Transfer, A.S. program and adjusting math prerequisites in the Psychology, A.A. program.

The Education & Training Center at the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville is expanding its offerings with new programs in basic machining and CNC programming and operations, aiming to address regional workforce needs. Additionally, the ETC is undergoing space renovations, with a planned move to the Peter C. Rossin Manufacturing Center in the Student Union by spring 2025.

The Community College of Philadelphia has introduced several new programs, including proficiency certificates in Community Health and Wellness, Real Estate, Pre-Doctorate in Pharmacy, and Video Game Audio, as well as an associate degree in Communication and Media Studies.

How do we determine Pennsylvania'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 20 community colleges in Pennsylvania. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Pennsylvania.