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 Wisconsin 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.
Between community colleges, technical schools, and universities, Wisconsin has 30 public schools. All the public schools in Wisconsin have affordable tuitions, ranging from $4,000 to $11,000. The University of Wisconsin – Madison has over 35,000 students in attendance, making it the largest in the state. The tuition runs about $11,000, and the school boasts an 85% graduation rate. Public affairs, veterinary medicine, and human ecology are just some of the fields students can study here.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Of Wisconsin’s 29 private schools, 18 are religious. With just under 10,000 students, Marquette University is the largest, and tuition for this school is about $42,000. Located in Milwaukee, this Catholic, Jesuit university offers degrees in fields like business, engineering, physical therapy, and law. Also located in Milwaukee, the state’s smallest institution, the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology, is a private graduate school with just over 30 students, and is geared toward those earning their doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Wisconsin, like many states, also provides a loan forgiveness program to those who are working in the health care field.
When people think Wisconsin, they might immediately crave cheese. After all, the state is home to a museum dedicated to all things cheese, including the annual making of a 90-pound wheel of Swiss. But The Beaver State is also known for its more than 15,000 lakes, including Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Prospective students looking to earn their associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree will enjoy the food, landscape, and educational variety Wisconsin has to offer.
Learn more about Wisconsin’s higher education opportunities by checking out the state’s variety of colleges and universities.
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.
We’ve identified 17 community colleges in Wisconsin. The following list shows the best community colleges in the state.
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
49%
Student body
3K
Western Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
16%
Student body
9K
Milwaukee Area Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
51%
Student body
2K
Lakeshore Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
40%
Student body
3K
Waukesha County Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
36%
Student body
3K
Northcentral Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
39%
Student body
2K
Mid-State Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
55%
Student body
5K
Fox Valley Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
32%
Student body
4K
Gateway Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
43%
Student body
6K
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
54%
Student body
2K
Moraine Park Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
63%
Student body
2K
Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
13%
Student body
<1K
College of Menominee Nation’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
47%
Student body
4K
Chippewa Valley Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
33%
Student body
2K
Blackhawk Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
55%
Student body
1K
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
7%
Student body
<1K
Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
50%
Student body
<1K
Nicolet College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Photo By: Royalbroil - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
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