Best Community Colleges in Tennessee 2023

Published: May 5, 2021
Updated: Sep 8, 2023

The best community colleges provide an effective springboard into higher education, offering students high-quality two-year degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The top-rated community colleges in Tennessee offer a broad selection of associate’s degrees, affordable tuition rates, and strong partnerships with public four-year schools so that students can easily transfer their credits into accredited bachelor’s degree programs.

Motlow State Community College 22 to 1
Volunteer State Community College 22 to 1
Pellissippi State Community College 20 to 1
Dyersburg State Community College 20 to 1
Columbia State Community College 20 to 1
Jackson State Community College 19 to 1
Northeast State Community College 19 to 1
Nashville State Community College 19 to 1
Roane State Community College 18 to 1
Walters State Community College 17 to 1

Jackson State Community College $4,326
Roane State Community College $4,326
Columbia State Community College $4,326
Walters State Community College $4,104
Southwest Tennessee Community College $4,104
Motlow State Community College $4,104
Northeast State Community College $4,104
Volunteer State Community College $4,104
Pellissippi State Community College $4,104
Nashville State Community College $4,104

Jackson State Community College
Dyersburg State Community College
Northeast State Community College
Cleveland State Community College
Nashville State Community College
Roane State Community College
Volunteer State Community College
Columbia State Community College
Pellissippi State Community College
Walters State Community College

Chattanooga State Community College 14 to 1
Walters State Community College 17 to 1
Southwest Tennessee Community College 17 to 1
Cleveland State Community College 17 to 1
Roane State Community College 18 to 1
Jackson State Community College 19 to 1
Northeast State Community College 19 to 1
Nashville State Community College 19 to 1
Pellissippi State Community College 20 to 1
Dyersburg State Community College 20 to 1

Walters State Community College $4,104
Southwest Tennessee Community College $4,104
Motlow State Community College $4,104
Northeast State Community College $4,104
Volunteer State Community College $4,104
Pellissippi State Community College $4,104
Nashville State Community College $4,104
Chattanooga State Community College $4,104
Dyersburg State Community College $4,104
Cleveland State Community College $4,104

Colleges and Universities in Tennessee

About one third of the higher learning institutes in Tennessee are public schools. Students who attend these schools can expect to pay anywhere between $4,000 to $13,000 in tuition and have the option to pursue degrees in fields such as economics, history, nursing, literature, education, and criminal justice. Tennessee’s largest public school, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, boasts some impressive alumni, including Oprah Winfrey, Kurt Vonnegut, and Cormac McCarthy. The private school alumni are equally as notable. For example, author James Patterson and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus both attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

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Tennessee also offers nearly 30 religiously affiliated schools, the largest being Belmont University in Nashville, located just blocks from the famous Music Row. Here, students can study a wide range of fields including Christian leadership, audio engineering technology, and biophysics. Additionally, Tennessee offers students several loan forgiveness programs. Math and science teachers, minority teachers, and registered nurses interested in becoming teachers or administrators who meet certain requirements may be eligible.

Tennessee is home to mouthwatering barbecues, electrified blues, and the sweeping majesty of the Smoky Mountains National Park. And with access to countless historic sites, unique museums, and lush green spaces, students attending one of the more than 60 colleges and universities in The Volunteer State will have plenty to do and see in their downtime.

Discover more about the top programs and higher education learning opportunities available in Tennessee.

What are Tennessee’s Colleges & Universities?

Tennessee’s Best Overall

How do we determine Tennessee'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 13 community colleges in Tennessee. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Tennessee.