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 Texas 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.
Texas offers more than 30 colleges and universities that serve communities of 10,000 students or more. The largest school in the bunch (and in the nation), Texas A&M University in College Station serves more than 65,000 students. The University of Texas at Austin is the next largest, serving about 45,000 students — but it too has a big claim to fame, as the wealthiest public university in the United States. Texas’s private colleges and universities, including Baylor University and Southern Methodist University, are also impressive in size and scope. The majority of these schools have religious affiliations and offer degrees in a variety fields, such as nursing, religious studies, criminal justice, business, and education.
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For students who prefer a more intimate educational environment, Texas offers a long list of smaller public and private colleges and universities, such as Abilene Christian University and University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Additionally, Texas has generous loan forgiveness programs for qualifying nurses, physicians, teachers, legal aid attorneys, and lawyers who work in the Texas Attorney General’s office.
Texas is known for doing things big. Big cities, big open spaces and, of course, big fun. Whether you’re hitting up the live music scene in Austin, catching a Cowboys game in Dallas, or strolling down the River Walk in San Antonio, you’re sure to have a good time. And, with more than 150 higher education institutes, it’s safe to say The Lone Star State is big on education too.
If you’re looking to earn your degree in the state of Texas, you’ll have plenty of higher learning institutes to choose from.
There are a total of 55 community colleges in Texas. The following list shows the 25 best community colleges in the state with a student body of greater than one thousand students.
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.
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
32%
Student body
2K
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Lamar Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
21%
Student body
2K
View profile
Lamar State College–Port Arthur’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
24%
Student body
4K
View profile
Trinity Valley Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
25%
Student body
2K
View profile
Galveston College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
37%
Student body
3K
View profile
Paris Junior College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
30%
Student body
1K
View profile
Northeast Texas Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
24%
Student body
5K
View profile
Navarro College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
28%
Student body
2K
View profile
Panola College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
23%
Student body
3K
View profile
Grayson College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
32%
Student body
4K
View profile
Kilgore College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
48%
Student body
5K
View profile
Lee College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
28%
Student body
3K
View profile
College of the Mainland’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
32%
Student body
2K
View profile
Ranger College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
16%
Student body
22K
View profile
Collin College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
43%
Student body
2K
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Texarkana College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
32%
Student body
6K
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Amarillo College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Graduation
12%
Student body
25K
View profile
Austin Community College District’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
25%
Student body
4K
View profile
Odessa College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
13%
Student body
5K
View profile
Del Mar College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
22%
Student body
11K
View profile
San Antonio College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
23%
Student body
17K
View profile
El Paso Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
15%
Student body
9K
View profile
Central Texas College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
29%
Student body
6K
View profile
St. Philip's College ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
29%
Student body
6K
View profile
Palo Alto College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
26%
Student body
3K
View profile
Hill College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
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