Prospective students of Las Positas Community College — who perhaps learned of the school from a student or an alum, or who drove past it on the 580 freeway so many times, or decided to attend a local community college — might be invariably driven to the school’s website by due diligence. The first visual in the top-of-page slideshow is ready to greet them with a first impression. A calculated salutation that reads, “LPC is ranked #2 Community College in California and #4 Community College in America.”
It’s enough to stoke whatever interest existed, if not leaving said prospects positively resolute on attending Las Positas College. An institution being recognized as elite has appeal to aspiring students and their families during such a critical choice.
This is perhaps why the first slide on the website hasn’t been updated.
Las Positas is no longer in the top five of the nation or state. Per the latest rankings, LPC, while still respectable, isn’t particularly close to that level anymore. But the temporary anointment paid dividends for a school still looking to reclaim its pre-pandemic energy.
A random message to LPC President Dyrell Foster sparked what would become a boon to the school.
“I got an email that said ‘Congratulations, your college was ranked,’ from Intelligent.com,” Foster said in an interview with The Express. “There was a link to the website, and I clicked on it and saw that we were ranked number one.
“I shared it with our marketing and communications director. We ran with it.”
Intelligent ranked Las Positas the top community college in California in the spring of 2023. The popular rankings website Niche had Las Positas No. 3 in California and No. 6 in America in 2023 in its community college hierarchy. Thus was born a campaign, one at least partially credited for the school’s uptick in enrollment.
This past May, Niche ranked LPC fourth among community colleges nationally and second in the state. Intelligent ranked the school No. 7 — still top 10. It was up for Las Positas. This was a big deal for the manicured fortress on the Livermore hill. The significance of the esteem underscores what followed.
A precipitous drop.
Las Positas went unranked by Intelligent, which recently debuted its annual list of Top 44 Community Colleges. According to the latest national rankings from Niche, released in September, Las Positas is now No. 11 in California and No. 30 in the nation.
“I don’t know the rhyme or reason as to why those rankings landed where they have,” Foster said. “Part of it is we’re a part of a large system. And there’s great work happening across the system.”
College rankings are an inexact science. The gold standard for adjudicating the best schools in the nation is U.S. News and Report. But it doesn’t rank community colleges. Its data about Las Positas is, however, used in the other rankings.
Niche is a generally well-regarded site that ranks every level of education from kindergarten to postgrad. It declares to have “built the most accurate, transparent and complete college search tool on the internet.” Its self-proclaimed uniqueness derives from its inclusion of student reviews — which are notoriously unreliable — in addition to traditional data sources.
For its rankings, Intelligent.com uses information from places like US News and Report and BestColleges.com. It also includes info from official sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard. While factoring in rankings, Intelligent also analyzes what it calls the four most critical factors: academic quality, graduation rate, student resources, cost and return on investment.
Does any of that make it more or less relevant? No one can say. The difficulty of deciding validity is illustrated by the variance. For example, Santa Barbara City College is No. 1 in America per Intelligent.com. But per Niche, it’s No. 22.
A fair question, still, is why did Las Positas drop?
Is it because LPC’s graduation rate of 29%, per the U.S. Department of Education, is below the national average of 32% for community colleges? And did that rate drop because of the increase in enrollment? Is it because the grade for the professors dropped from an A on Niche to the current B-? Is it because in the 2024 WalletHub rankings LPC was ranked outside the top 500 in “Education Outcomes” — which among other things factors in first-year retention rate, graduation rate, degrees and certificates awarded, transfer weight and student-to-faculty ratio? (WalletHub ranks Las Positas No. 23 in California and No. 121 in the nation.)
Or is this all LPC just settling back where it belongs: near the top in some areas, near the middle of the pack in some areas, and needing improvement in other areas. A testament shared by the better community colleges.
If that’s the case, what perhaps matters most is how well the school took advantage of its brief moment at the top.
“In fact, since the rankings,” Foster said, “we’ve continued to do great work on behalf of our students.”
TOP PHOTO: Las Positas got as high as No. 1 in California on one college rankings site. But the school’s time at the top didn’t last.
Olivia Fitts is the News Editor and Opinions Editor for The Express. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @OLIVIAFITTS2.
