Rankings / By Major
Best Community Colleges for Nursing
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This ranking scores 50 institutions on graduation rates, graduate earnings, debt burdens, and social mobility data from Opportunity Insights. Every data point comes from federal sources. No surveys, no opinions.
Social mobility carries the heaviest weight in our algorithm. We use Raj Chetty's Mobility Report Card — built on 30 million anonymized tax records — to measure whether a college changes a family's economic trajectory across generations. Schools that take low-income students and launch them into higher earnings rank higher than schools that admit wealthy students and take credit for their success.
The transparency penalty matters here. Schools that don't report their data get scored lower than schools that do. If an institution won't show you its numbers, we think you should know that before you write them a tuition check.
How We Ranked
Associate's-degree institutions with nursing programs, ranked by outcomes, program concentration, and federal field-of-study earnings for nursing graduates.
Read our full methodology →Quick Numbers
Earnings Outcomes
What graduates earn 10 years after enrolling. Data from College Scorecard.
Distribution of Median Earnings
Earnings vs. Net Price
Top-left = best value. Top-ranked schools are highlighted.
Completion & Access
Graduation rates and who gets in. Data from College Scorecard & IPEDS.
Graduation Rates
Pell Grant Rate vs. Graduation Rate
Right = more low-income students. Higher = more graduate.
Social Mobility
Mobility rate = % of students who start in the bottom income quintile and reach the top. Data from Opportunity Insights.
Mobility Rate Distribution
Mobility vs. Cost
Higher mobility at lower cost = life-changing value.
Cost & Debt
What families actually pay and what students owe. Data from College Scorecard.
Median Debt at Graduation
Where These Schools Are Located
Rank Overview
All ranked schools. Bar length shows earnings relative to the top school.
| # | School | Earnings | Grad Rate | Net Price | Debt | Pell % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Mendocino College Ukiah, CA | $40K | 28% | $8K | $11K | 28% |
| #2 | Mount Wachusett Community … Gardner, MA | $41K | 27% | $8K | $10K | 44% |
| #3 | Temple College Temple, TX | $39K | 29% | $11K | $13K | 35% |
| #4 | Salem Community College Carneys Point, NJ | $38K | 39% | $11K | $10K | 40% |
| #5 | North Shore Community Coll… Danvers, MA | $45K | 18% | $9K | $9K | 32% |
| #6 | Independence Community Col… Independence, KS | $35K | 30% | $3K | $6K | 37% |
| #7 | Lake Area Technical College Watertown, SD | $45K | 69% | $16K | $12K | 27% |
| #8 | Victoria College Victoria, TX | $42K | 27% | $3K | $11K | 37% |
| #9 | Orange County Community Co… Middletown, NY | $44K | 24% | $7K | $12K | 29% |
| #10 | Manor College Jenkintown, PA | $47K | 25% | $13K | $19K | 52% |
| #11 | Northern Essex Community C… Haverhill, MA | $43K | 20% | $6K | $9K | 47% |
| #12 | Northern Wyoming Community… Sheridan, WY | $40K | 43% | $9K | $9K | 18% |
| #13 | Massachusetts Bay Communit… Wellesley Hills, MA | $53K | 16% | $7K | $7K | 25% |
| #14 | Lake Region State College Devils Lake, ND | $50K | 51% | $14K | $10K | 10% |
| #15 | Piedmont Virginia Communit… Charlottesville, VA | $41K | 37% | $6K | $9K | 25% |
| #16 | Barton County Community Co… Great Bend, KS | $40K | 38% | $10K | $10K | 19% |
| #17 | Western Nebraska Community… Scottsbluff, NE | $39K | 36% | $5K | $9K | 27% |
| #18 | Muskegon Community College Muskegon, MI | $37K | 30% | $4K | $9K | 29% |
| #19 | Casper College Casper, WY | $41K | 41% | $10K | $10K | 24% |
| #20 | Williston State College Williston, ND | $44K | 41% | $6K | $10K | 21% |
| #21 | North Country Community Co… Saranac Lake, NY | $38K | 27% | $12K | $12K | 39% |
| #22 | North Central Missouri Col… Trenton, MO | $41K | 57% | $14K | $11K | 35% |
| #23 | Quincy College Quincy, MA | $53K | 16% | $17K | $14K | 33% |
| #24 | North Iowa Area Community … Mason City, IA | $43K | 58% | $10K | $10K | 24% |
| #25 | Lower Columbia College Longview, WA | $41K | 24% | $8K | $11K | 36% |
| #26 | Lehigh Carbon Community Co… Schnecksville, PA | $42K | 29% | $9K | $11K | 34% |
| #27 | Iowa Central Community Col… Fort Dodge, IA | $42K | 43% | $9K | $11K | 35% |
| #28 | Central Ohio Technical Col… Newark, OH | $39K | 27% | $10K | $12K | 27% |
| #29 | Dakota College at Bottineau Bottineau, ND | $41K | 51% | $10K | $11K | 13% |
| #30 | Georgia Highlands College Rome, GA | $43K | 21% | $7K | $12K | 41% |
| #31 | Connecticut State Communit… New Britain, CT | $41K | 21% | $12K | $9K | 45% |
| #32 | South Florida State College Avon Park, FL | $40K | 49% | $4K | $7K | 43% |
| #33 | Allen County Community Col… Iola, KS | $40K | 38% | $9K | $7K | 15% |
| #34 | West Shore Community College Scottville, MI | $36K | 29% | $2K | $9K | 30% |
| #35 | SUNY College of Technology… Alfred, NY | $50K | 54% | $15K | $14K | 45% |
| #36 | Dyersburg State Community … Dyersburg, TN | $36K | 31% | $5K | $7K | 34% |
| #37 | Hudson County Community Co… Jersey City, NJ | $34K | 24% | $7K | $11K | 56% |
| #38 | College of Marin Kentfield, CA | $43K | 38% | $12K | $10K | 17% |
| #39 | Waubonsee Community College Sugar Grove, IL | $45K | 40% | $11K | $7K | 21% |
| #40 | Greenfield Community College Greenfield, MA | $37K | 26% | $8K | $8K | 38% |
| #41 | Luzerne County Community C… Nanticoke, PA | $40K | 22% | $9K | $11K | 37% |
| #42 | Lansing Community College Lansing, MI | $39K | 24% | $5K | $13K | 28% |
| #43 | Weatherford College Weatherford, TX | $42K | 28% | $10K | $10K | 26% |
| #44 | Community College of Phila… Philadelphia, PA | $41K | 22% | $12K | $11K | 57% |
| #45 | Raritan Valley Community C… Branchburg, NJ | $48K | 33% | $7K | $11K | 26% |
| #46 | Northwest Mississippi Comm… Senatobia, MS | $36K | 44% | $8K | $7K | 30% |
| #47 | Allegany College of Maryland Cumberland, MD | $38K | 42% | $9K | $14K | 32% |
| #48 | Mitchell Technical College Mitchell, SD | $51K | 74% | $13K | $12K | 32% |
| #49 | Alvin Community College Alvin, TX | $46K | 24% | $9K | $5K | 25% |
| #50 | Pearl River Community Coll… Poplarville, MS | $33K | 36% | $7K | $10K | 52% |
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Sources & Citations
David Krug
Co-Founder, CollegeRanker
David Krug is the co-founder of CollegeRanker and a data systems architect focused on making institutional research accessible to families. He builds the data pipelines and ranking algorithms that power CollegeRanker, drawing from federal datasets and Raj Chetty's Opportunity Insights research to measure what traditional rankings ignore: whether a college actually changes a family's economic trajectory.
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