Best Community Colleges in Wisconsin 2024

Badge for BEST IN WISCONSIN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Published: May 6, 2021
Updated: Oct 16, 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 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.

Milwaukee Area Technical College
Western Technical College
Fox Valley Technical College
Gateway Technical College
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College
Lakeshore Technical College
College of Menominee Nation
Waukesha County Technical College
Northcentral Technical College
Chippewa Valley Technical College

Waukesha County Technical College 22 to 1
Northcentral Technical College 18 to 1
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College 16 to 1
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College 16 to 1
Chippewa Valley Technical College 14 to 1
Lakeshore Technical College 13 to 1
Mid-State Technical College 12 to 1
Moraine Park Technical College 11 to 1
Fox Valley Technical College 10 to 1
Milwaukee Area Technical College 9 to 1

College of Menominee Nation $6,200
Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College $6,030
Northwood Technical College $4,570
Fox Valley Technical College $4,304
Gateway Technical College $4,304
Milwaukee Area Technical College $4,304
Nicolet College $4,304
Chippewa Valley Technical College $4,304
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College $4,304
Waukesha County Technical College $4,304

Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College $8,100

Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College
Nicolet College
College of Menominee Nation
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College
Northwood Technical College
Blackhawk Technical College
Northcentral Technical College
Moraine Park Technical College
Mid-State Technical College
Gateway Technical College

Nicolet College
Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College
Blackhawk Technical College
Mid-State Technical College
Moraine Park Technical College
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College
Northwood Technical College
Chippewa Valley Technical College
Northcentral Technical College
Waukesha County Technical College

Northwood Technical College 5 to 1
Nicolet College 7 to 1
College of Menominee Nation 7 to 1
Gateway Technical College 8 to 1
Blackhawk Technical College 8 to 1
Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College 8 to 1
Milwaukee Area Technical College 9 to 1
Western Technical College 9 to 1
Fox Valley Technical College 10 to 1
Moraine Park Technical College 11 to 1

Northcentral Technical College $3,443
Lakeshore Technical College $4,045
Mid-State Technical College $4,179
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College $4,290
Western Technical College $4,298
Moraine Park Technical College $4,303
Fox Valley Technical College $4,304
Gateway Technical College $4,304
Milwaukee Area Technical College $4,304
Nicolet College $4,304

Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College $8,100

Colleges and Universities in Wisconsin

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.

What are Wisconsin’s Colleges & Universities?

Wisconsin’s Best Overall

How do we determine Wisconsin'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 17 community colleges in Wisconsin. The following list shows the best community colleges and primarily associate degree granting colleges in Wisconsin.