New Report Ranking Community Colleges: How the Hudson Valley Fares

Just in time for the fall semester, a new study ranks the nation's top community colleges — and several in the Hudson Valley stack up well against their counterparts nationwide.

WalletHub’s analysts compared 821 community colleges to identify those that outshine their competition. In making such a comparison, they examined each school across 12 key metrics, ranging from the cost of in-state tuition and fees to student-faculty ratio to graduation rate.

Two junior colleges in New York made the Top 10. In fact, No. 1 nationwide is the Helene Fuld School of Nursing in New York City. The other is popular among Hudson Valley students: the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, which ranked No. 6.

The only other New York community college that made it into the top 100 was Guttman Community College, the newest in the CUNY system, at No. 47.

Here are the rankings for the top Hudson Valley community colleges:

• Columbia-Greene Community College: No. 158
• Westchester Community College: No. 184
• Hudson Valley Community College: No. 240
• Rockland Community College No. 376
• Dutchess Community College No. 519

The researchers said:

While community colleges continue to be the butt of jokes, their graduates are getting the last laugh as they out-earn bachelor’s degree holders and their alma maters finally earn respect. Across the board, community colleges are slowly stacking up against their university counterparts by offering better schedule flexibility, smaller class sizes and comparatively rigorous coursework, including bachelor’s degree programs in some states at a fraction of the university cost. First-time college entrants find those qualities most appealing — as do university students transferring to community colleges, an emerging trend that reverses the traditional path of “upgrading” from a two-year to a four-year institution.

In order to determine the best community colleges in the U.S., WalletHub’s analysts compared 821 such institutions across three key dimensions, including: 1) Cost & Financing, 2) Education Outcomes and 3) Career Outcomes. Due to data limitations, not all member schools of the American Association of Community Colleges were included.

The 12 relevant metrics include tuition costs, faculty to student ratios, student-loan default rates, graduation rates, and availability of grants.

"Community colleges have multiple missions to accomplish, which makes sweeping evaluations of institutional performance difficult," said Eunyoung Kim, a professor at Seton Hall University.