Best Community Colleges in Virginia 2025

Badge for BEST IN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Updated: Nov 25, 2024

Key Takeaways

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

Table of Contents

10 Best Community Colleges in Virginia in 2025

Northern Virginia Community College
Columbia College
+21
Tidewater Community College
Richard Bland College
+1
Danville Community College
–3
Brightpoint Community College
+19
Piedmont Virginia Community College
Virginia Highlands Community College
+3
Virginia Western Community College
–1
Central Virginia Community College
+4

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.

Northern Virginia Community College remains in the top spot in our 2025 ranking of the best community colleges in Virginia. Columbia College jumps an impressive 21 spots to move up to number 2.

Northern Virginia Community College has introduced several new programs, including Associate of Science degrees in Elementary Education, Grades 6-12 Social Studies Education, and K-12 Special Education Adapted and General Curriculum.

Additionally, NOVA now offers Career Studies Certificates in Emerging Educator, Automotive Technology focusing on Electric, Hybrid, and Autonomous Vehicles, and Information Systems Technology with a specialization in Fiber and Network Technician.

Columbia College, the biggest mover in our ranking, has streamlined its educational and administrative processes, with the Student Service department offering continuous counseling on campus life, academic performance, and career advancement.

Brightpoint Community College now offers a Winter Mini Session from December 16, 2024, to January 10, 2025, allowing students to complete a class entirely online in just one month. Brightpoint has also expanded its program offerings to include over 75 degree and certificate programs.

How do we determine Virginia'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 26 community colleges in Virginia. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Virginia.