Local Community College Among Best In The US

Four schools in New York have been named to the Aspen Institute's list of 150 Best Community Colleges. Selected from a pool of nearly 1,000 public two-year colleges nationwide, they're now eligible for the 2019 $1 million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.

With its College Excellence Program, the Aspen Institute aims to advance higher education practices, policies, and leadership in ways that help institutions of higher education strengthen the areas its leaders feel matter most: access, learning, program completion and success in the labor market.

Only one of the four New York colleges in the running for the Aspen Prize, awarded every two years, is from the Hudson Valley. The four are:

• Rockland Community College
• CUNY Kingsborough Community College
• Herkimer County Community College
• Nassau Community College

“We are extremely pleased to be recognized by the Aspen Institute among the nation’s top community colleges,” Dr. Michael A. Baston, RCC President, said in a press release. “Student success is our primary focus, and I am proud of the efforts of our faculty and staff to help students meet their goals.”

The Top 150 were selected through a process of reviewing publicly available data on nearly 1,000 community colleges across the country.

RCC now moves forward to the next round of the competition by submitting an application to be reviewed for a spot on the top ten Aspen Prize finalists list. Those finalists will be named in May 2018. The Aspen Institute will then conduct site visits to each of the finalists and collect additional quantitative data.

A jury will select the grand prize winner in the spring of 2019. The jury will also name one or more finalists with distinction and designate at least one college as a rising star.

Learn more about the Aspen Institute's methodology.

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