TIME Lists Hopkinsville Community College Among Best
Hopkinsville Community College is the only Kentucky school on TIME's unranked 2027 list of top community colleges.
Updated on Nov. 14, 2026 in College Applications
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TIME's America's Best Community Colleges 2027 list names Hopkinsville Community College among the top 250 community colleges in the United States. The unranked list was created by TIME with data firm Statista and covers roughly 1,100 eligible schools.
Why it matters
The list gives Hopkinsville and Kentucky students a national benchmark for comparing two-year programs. Its criteria emphasize outcomes such as graduation rates, transfer rates, and graduates' earnings, which matter to families weighing community college against four-year options.
The list ranks 250 schools out of approximately 1,100 U.S. community colleges, with eligibility requiring public, accredited, financially solvent institutions enrolling more than 100 students. Details on how individual schools scored were not provided in the source.
The players
TIME
TIME is a long-running American news magazine that publishes national rankings and lists on education and other topics.
Statista
Statista is a German-founded statistics and data company that supplies market and research datasets to publishers and businesses.
The details
TIME built the list with data firm Statista using student-faculty ratio, core expenditure per student, diversity, graduates' earnings, graduation rate, transfer rate, and campus resources. Hopkinsville Community College is the only community college from Kentucky included.
Timeline
2027 — America's Best Community Colleges 2027 list published.
Season Trajectory
This edition extends TIME's recurring annual ranking of community colleges, which has tracked the sector's growing role as a lower-cost pathway to four-year degrees. Hopkinsville's inclusion places a Kentucky institution within that national comparison set for 2027.
Students comparing community colleges can use the list's criteria, including transfer rate and graduation rate, when reviewing schools. Families weighing Hopkinsville Community College can check those outcome measures alongside cost and program fit before applying.
The takeaway
Community college rankings reward schools that move students to graduation and transfer. Applicants should weigh those outcomes as heavily as headline rankings when choosing a two-year pathway.
Further reading
Explore more on college applications to see how community colleges fit into the transfer and admissions process.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Whopam.
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