2012 Career College Rankings
Overall Rankings - Methodology
It's no secret that degree holders enjoy a competitive edge in the job market. But if you're weighing your options when it comes to continuing education, it can be hard to evaluate which schools and programs are legitimately going to advance your skills and help you be a better candidate in the future. Can you trust the commercials?
Guide to Career Education is committed to helping prospective students make good investments and informed decisions. That's why we developed our career college rankings. This ranking system is designed to help you narrow your search towards reputable, accredited schools that have strong track records of success. By taking into account important data including average tuition costs, retention rates, repayment rates, and student reviews, we feel our rankings will help you find a school you can feel good about.
Overall Rankings
The top-ranked schools are listed here. Clicking on the school's name will take you to the individual information page for that school so you can learn more about the institution and the various degree programs it offers. To understand more about how we arrived at the scores that determine our ranking order, be sure to check out the methodology section.
Rank |
School |
School Type |
Repayment Rate |
Retention Rate |
Tuition |
Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # 1 | Cortiva Institute | For-Profit | 73% | 78% | $11,795 | 91.64 |
| # 2 | Harding University | Non-Profit | 57% | 80% | $14,040 | 85.34 |
| # 3 | Western Governors University | Non-Profit | 51% | 76% | $5,870 | 83.26 |
| # 4 | Central Michigan University | Public | 49% | 80% | $9,688 | 82.21 |
| # 5 | Madison Media Institute | For-Profit | 55% | 73% | $17,268 | 77.96 |
| # 6 | Iowa Central College | Public | 54% | 55% | $5,790 | 75.93 |
| # 7 | University of Maryland University College | Public | 59% | 37% | $6,000 | 72.93 |
| # 8 | Daytona College | For-Profit | 42% | 67% | $9,800 | 71.93 |
| # 9 | Liberty University Online | Non-Profit | 45% | 71% | $18,064 | 68.08 |
| # 10 | Brandman University | Non-Profit | --- | --- | $9,611 | 67.51 |
| # 11 | Anthem Institute | For-Profit | 40% | 66% | $12,777 | 66.91 |
| # 12 | Motorcycle Mechanics Institute | For-Profit | 50% | 97% | $24,700 | 66.83 |
| # 13 | TechSkills | For-Profit | --- | --- | $11,450 | 66.72 |
| # 14 | The Art Institutes | For-Profit | 36% | 90% | $17,444 | 66.55 |
| # 15 | Eagle Gate College | For-Profit | 43% | 60% | $13,967 | 65.89 |
| # 16 | University of Phoenix | For-Profit | 44% | 52% | $10,120 | 65.50 |
| # 17 | Norwich University | Non-Profit | 74% | 77% | $28,738 | 65.44 |
| # 18 | CollegeAmerica | For-Profit | 72% | 38% | $22,536 | 61.28 |
| # 19 | Nashville Auto Diesel College (NADC) | For-Profit | 46% | 65% | $21,546 | 60.22 |
| # 20 | The Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University-DC | Non-Profit | 67% | 91% | $39,864 | 58.43 |
| # 21 | National American University Online | For-Profit | 35% | 55% | $11,795 | 57.80 |
| # 22 | Regis University Online | Non-Profit | 52% | 93% | $30,598 | 57.70 |
| # 23 | Walden University | For-Profit | 41% | 29% | $9,480 | 57.11 |
| # 24 | Ashford University | For-Profit | 45% | 36% | $16,270 | 56.87 |
| # 25 | Capella University | For-Profit | 40% | 29% | $10,980 | 55.59 |
| # 26 | Wright Career College | Non-Profit | 13% | 74% | $10,040 | 55.29 |
| # 27 | Dorsey Schools | For-Profit | 30% | 63% | $15,625 | 54.38 |
| # 28 | New England College | Non-Profit | 62% | 60% | $29,054 | 54.34 |
| # 29 | Career Point College | For-Profit | 18% | 74% | $14,492 | 53.91 |
| # 30 | Everest College | For-Profit | 24% | 75% | $17,780 | 53.09 |
Methodology
The goal of publishing these rankings is to use statistics to generate a reliable method that ranks career schools on a yearly basis. These ratings will equip potential students to make educated decisions about the relative merits of various schools as they consider continuing education. The data we used to generate these rankings came from The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Department of Education.
The following data points were included in our ranking process:
- Tuition and Fees: For many prospective students, cost is a primary factor in their decision about which school to attend. By including average tuition numbers in our rankings, we're recognizing schools that offer a quality education at a lower cost are preferred by most vocational students.
- For Profit vs. Nonprofit: While this data point was not weighted in our ranking calculations, the table does denote whether a school is run by a profit-seeking company or by a not-for-profit institution. We feel this additional information helps to promote transparency about the institutions featured in the rankings.
- Retention Rates: Do students stay to finish their degrees at this particular school or do the majority of them get discouraged and dropout or transfer? Graduation and retention rates help students assess both student satisfaction and how well a school supports its student body.
- Student Feedback: Guide to Career Education has collected student feedback offered by hundreds of actual students. Because we know students value input from their peers, we took student satisfaction data into account in our rankings.
- Repayment Rate: These percentages refer to the amount of students who are able to pay back their loans within the allotted time without defaulting. Assuming that one of the goals of continuing education is preparing graduates for gainful employment, this data, which is released by the U.S. government, is included to help students determine whether or not students who attend these schools find it difficult to cover the cost of their education after graduation.
