Academic Influence Ranks The Best Community Colleges, Nationally And By State

Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland has been rated the best community college in the U.S. by Academic Influence, the college rankings system that uses artificial intelligence technology to search massive databases and measure the impact of work by individuals who’ve been affiliated with colleges and universities throughout the world.

Last Thursday, Academic Influence released its first-ever ranking of  the best 50 American community colleges - those two-year colleges that award associate degrees along with a variety of shorter-term certificates. The rankings were derived from an initial list of 839 community colleges in the US that met the following three conditions:

1. They were fully accredited.
2. They enrolled at least 1,000 students.
3. They primarily provided two-year, associate degree programs (along with certificate credentials in most cases).

Academic Influence used the same methodology it’s employed to rank all kinds of higher education institutions, including liberal art colleges, research universities and international institutions. It’s approach is based on the premise that the people affiliated with a school determine its quality. To measure that quality, a trademarked measure termed “Concentrated Influence” is computed. 

Using machine-learning technology developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Academic Influence searches open-source data in two massive sources - Wikipedia and CrossRef - for papers, chapters, books, and citations to individuals worldwide. Collectively, these databases contain billions of continuously updated data points about millions of individuals’ achievements.

Then, the Concentrated Influence score of a given institution is calculated by combining all the “mentions” of the individuals who’ve been associated with that institution as faculty, administrators or alums. That score is then divided by the school’s total number of students. Adjusting for size this way gives small and mid-sized schools an equal chance of competing with larger colleges. A small school with proportionately more influential faculty than a large school, whose absolute influence may be bigger, will nonetheless score higher using Concentrated Influence rankings.

In order to control for other confounding factors, the searched data are restricted to the past ten years, and the names of famous politicians, artists, performers, etc. are suppressed, solving the problem that they otherwise would exert an inordinate influence on a school’s ranking. Individuals’ influence is tracked constantly in real time, and influence scores are updated quarterly.

Here are the top 10 community colleges in the nation according to Academic Influence’s list of the top 50.

1. Anne Arundel Community College (Maryland)
2. Roxbury Community College (Massachusetts)
3. Eastern Maine Community College
4. Springfield Technical Community College (Massachusetts)
5. College of Marin (California)
6. Los Angeles City College
7. Lamar Institute of Technology (Texas)
8. Kennedy-King College (Illinois)
9. West Kentucky Community and Technical College
10. Lamar State College - Port Arthur (Texas)

Because community colleges typically attract students primarily from the surrounding region, national rankings are likely to mean less to prospective students than the ratings of four-year schools that draw students from a larger geographical base. So Academic Influence has also provided community college rankings for each state, a resource that should be more useful to students focused on two-year institutions.

For example, if you live in California, the top five community college are:

1. College of Marin
2. Los Angeles City College
3. Chabot College
4. Columbia Collge
5. Los Angeles Valley College

In Illinois, the top five are:

1. Kennedy-King College
2. Richland Community College
3. Lewis and Clark Community College
4. Olive-Harvey College
5. Black Hawk College

California led the nation, with 13 institutions in the top 50. Massachusetts was second with six, and five states (Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Texas) each had three schools in the top 50. You can see the full state-by-state list here.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has posed a particularly difficult challenge for community colleges. Their overall enrollment for fall, 2020 declined by 10.1% (or more than 500,000 students) compared to 2019. Likewise, transfers are down. Both the traditional upward transfer (where students move from a two-year to a four-year college) as well as reverse transfers (where four-year students return to a community college typically to complete an associate’s degree) saw declines year over year. Taken together, the impact of the pandemic has wreaked more havoc on community colleges and their students, many of whom are from lower income families and are first-generation-to-college attendees, than any other higher education sector.

Community colleges offer an affordable start in higher education for many students, and they provide valuable retraining for adults looking to change or advance their careers. For many students they are the first and last best chance to earn a degree or credential. Their success is crucial not only for personal opportunities but also for the nation’s economic prosperity.

The Biden administration has committed to making free community college a part of its plan to rebuild the economy, and that policy has a strong advocate in first lady Jill Biden, herself a community college teacher. More attention to the productivity of these institutions is warranted.

Here’s how Jed Macosko, president of Academic Influence and a physics professor at Wake Forest University, explained it, “Community colleges are an integral part of the whole process by which Americans learn and acquire skills. Academic Influence’s big data approach highlights these institutions and gives a fresh perspective on the ones that, nationwide, are doing a terrific job. At the state level, our rankings will provide students more data about each school's track record, and we hope they will be a welcomed resource for people looking for a good community college option."