Nine of Mississippi’s 15 community colleges have been named among the top 150 community colleges in the country, making them eligible for the Aspen Institute’s $1 million prize for Community College Excellence:

• Copiah-Lincoln Community College
• East Mississippi Community College
• Hinds Community College
• Holmes Community College
• Itawamba Community College
• Meridian Community College
• Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College
• Northeast Mississippi Community College
• Southwest Mississippi Community College

The community colleges named as eligible to compete for the 2019 prize were selected from a pool of nearly 1,000 public two-year colleges nationwide. 
Awarded every two years, the Aspen Prize recognizes institutions with outstanding achievements in four areas: learning, certificate and degree completion; employment and earnings; and high level of access and success for minority and low-income students.
“We are very proud to be named in the top 150 community colleges in the nation. It demonstrators that many of our initiatives to help students succeed are working and resulting in national recognition,” said Co-Lin President Ronnie Nettles. “Our faculty and staff are focused on student success and the result is higher students completion rates.”
The top 10 finalists for the 2019 Aspen Prize will be named in May. The Aspen Institute will then conduct site visits to each of the finalists and collect additional data.
The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC.