Best Community Colleges in Pennsylvania 2026

Badge for BEST IN PENNSYLVANIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Updated: Jan 30, 2026

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 2026

Community College of Allegheny County
University of Pittsburgh at Titusville
Community College of Philadelphia
Montgomery County Community College
+3
Bucks County Community College
Harcum College
+2
Northampton Community College
–1
Delaware County Community College
+1
Manor College
–5
Westmoreland County Community College

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.