Most Affordable Colleges in Wisconsin 2025

Badge for MOST AFFORDABLE COLLEGES IN WISCONSIN

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Published: May 6, 2021
Updated: Oct 9, 2024

Key Takeaways

Many of the schools in our ranking of the most affordable colleges in Wisconsin have tuition of less than $8,000.
Public universities in Wisconsin are typically more affordable than private colleges.
Even though public universities in Wisconsin are typically more affordable, private colleges may award more financial aid, scholarships, and grants, lowering the overall cost of tuition.

Table of Contents

10 Most Affordable Colleges in Wisconsin 2025

University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
+1
University of Wisconsin–Whitewater
+2
University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
–2
University of Wisconsin–River Falls
+6
University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh
+1
University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
–1
University of Wisconsin–Stout
+2
University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
–5

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.

Colleges in the University of Wisconsin state system make up every school in our 2025 ranking of the most affordable colleges in the state. UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee remain in the top 2 positions this year.

The University of Wisconsin system has implemented the Wisconsin Tuition Promise, which offers additional financial support to lower-income students. UW has also emphasized expanding scholarships, with over 800 scholarships available, and enhancing programs aimed at student success and career readiness.

UW-River Falls is our biggest mover this year, jumping 6 spots to move into the number 6 position. UWRF has placed an especially significant focus on scholarships, helping its strong rise in public and regional rankings.

How do we determine Wisconsin's best affordable colleges and universities?

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.

There are 14 colleges and universities in Wisconsin with stated tuitions and fees under $20,000/year. The following list of the most affordable colleges and universities in Wisconsin is composed entirely of schools offering bachelor’s degree programs, have stated tuition and fees near or under the national average of $16,000/year, and are fully accredited colleges.