Alexandria campus in the spring. Photo by: KJ Mushung

The Virginia Community College System was created in 1966, and its ability to serve students has only expanded since its founding. Thanks to online courses and other measures, access to higher education is becoming less of a dream and more of a reality for residents throughout the Commonwealth.

We wanted to find out which of the state’s 23 two-year public institutions that we ranked could be called the best community colleges in Virginia, so we did some digging. We took relevant data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Virginia Community College System and using in-house metrics, ranked them for prospective students…

As the largest school on our list, Northern Virginia Community College — NOVA for short — delivers its educational programs to a student body that outsizes those at most universities. That the institution manages the educational fortunes of more than 51,000 students is impressive in its own right, but that it also boasts the best retention rate and the No. 3 rate of outbound university transfers while doing so is downright heroic. The cost of tuition at NOVA is on the affordable side of average, also, checking in at around $900 less than the statewide average for all public two-year schools reported by the College Board in 2014.

See which college got first place. Read the entire story at USA Today College.

By: Contributing Author

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