Mesalands Community College is ranked the top community college in New Mexico and the 62nd best community college in the nation, for quality, affordability, and performance outcomes, in WalletHub’s “2019’s Best & Worst Community Colleges.”

In their rankings, WalletHub compared more than 700 community colleges across the nation using three key dimensions: cost and financing, education outcomes, and career outcomes. The dimensions were then evaluated by 19 total metrics.

Cost and financing included the following: the cost of tuition and fees, presence of free community college education, average amount of grant or scholarship aid received, availability of employment services for students, per-student spending, school spending efficiency, and faculty salary.

Education outcomes were comprised of the following: first-year retention rate, graduation rate, transfer-out rate, credentials awarded per 100 full-time equivalent students, student to faculty ratio, share of full-time faculty, and presence of special learning opportunities.

Lastly was career outcomes, that assessed the return on educational investment for graduates, the student loan default rate, median salary after attending, and share of former students earning above the average earnings of a high school graduate.

Data for this article was obtained from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, and the Council for Community and Economic Research and College Measures.