Video: EMCC Places 8th in National Ranking

[PRESS RELEASE]

SMARTASSET RANKS EMCC 8^TH IN THE NATION IN ‘THE BEST COMMUNITY COLLEGES OF 2016’

            SCOOBA — East Mississippi Community College has been ranked No. 8 among community colleges in the nation by SmartAsset, a company that uses data to help people make sound financial decisions.

“East Mississippi Community College has one of the smallest student-faculty ratios (12:1) in our study,” said Amanda Dixon, a writer with SmartAsset who worked on the study. “It’s also relatively cheap. Tuition and fees cost full-time, in-state students only $2,600, which is about 39.5 percent lower than the national average.”

EMCC President Dr. Thomas Huebner said he was pleased with the findings from the study but not surprised.

“We have worked hard to keep our tuition rates affordable,” Huebner said. “The quality of education at community colleges in Mississippi is second to none. To achieve a top-10 ranking by SmartAsset validates our efforts to ensure that students at EMCC not only have access to an exceptional education but one that makes sound economic sense.”

According to the company’s website, SmartAsset looked at 565 two-year public colleges for the study. There are 1,047 public community colleges in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Education.

SmartAsset ranked the colleges by examining four factors: the student-faculty ratio, the graduation and transfer rate, the cost of in-state tuition and fees and the ratio of graduates’ median starting salaries to the full cost of attendance.

“We gave each factor full weight,” Dixon said. “Then, we gave each school a score based on the number of standard deviations above or below the mean it was in every category. We used those scores to rank the top community colleges, with the best school receiving a score of 100 and the lowest ranking school receiving a 0.”

EMCC’s scored 84.91, making it the only college in Mississippi included in the top-10 list.

“SmartAsset wanted to find the best community colleges of 2016,” the company’s website states. “We concluded that the top community colleges would have high success rates. These schools would provide their students with an inexpensive, world-class education and a good return on investment.”

According to the study’s findings, on average, in-state students who attended public four-year institutions spent $9,410 during the 2015-2016 school year on tuition and fees. After accounting for room and board, that total rose to $19,548. By attending a local community college, the average student can save a little more than $8,000 a year when looking at the total cost of attendance, according to the study.

“It is common knowledge that community colleges provide a high-value return for our students,” Huebner said. “To be ranked in the top 10 in a study that measures student-faculty ratios, graduation and transfer rates, cost of tuition and median starting salaries of graduates is phenomenal. We are proud not so much for what this means for the college but for how it speaks to the education provided to our students.”