UCSB, Westmont, SBCC Named Among Nation’s Best Schools

This week, Santa Barbara City College was named one of the Top 10 Community Colleges in the country by the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, making it the only California school on the list and one of the finalists for the institute’s inaugural search for the country’s number-one community college. The 10 finalists named this week were selected from a list of 120 schools handpicked by a panel of experts earlier this summer. The winning school, announced later this year, will take home a $1-million grant. SBCC faculty and staff celebrated their selection on Tuesday morning with a public ceremony at the school. In more good school news, UCSB was ranked 10th-best public university and 42nd-best university in the country by U.S. News & World Report; across town in Montecito, Westmont College also picked up honors in the U.S. News ranking as 90th out of 252 liberal arts colleges in the country, coming a month after Forbes magazine listed the Christian school as 76th on its top-colleges list.