March 20, 2021
Best Community Colleges: DeAnza
College (CA)
DeAnza College, located in
Cupertino, California, also home to Apple, Symantec, Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and
many other high-technology firms.
The community college is part of
Silicon Valley’s Foothill-De Anza Community College District, which also
administers Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. The district
serves the cities of Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo
Alto, Sunnyvale and San Jose.
The annual enrollment is ~22,000
students, with a transfer rate of ~1,800 students. DeAnza College has 10
instructional divisions which sustain more than 100 areas of study.
The college offers 90-plus associate
degree and university transfer programs, including popular majors such as
Animation, Broadcasting, Biological, Health and Environmental Sciences, Graphic
Design and Computer Graphics.
The college’s
Intercultural/International Studies program has garnered much attention and the
college attracts students from more than 50 countries.
The Community Education program
offers non-credit classes, weekend adult workshops and summer programs for
children.
DeAnza College is a cultural hub for
the Silicon Valley area. It is the home of Flint Center for the Performing, the
Fujitsu Planetarium, the Euphrat Museum of Art and the California History
Center.
The Kirsch Center, which opened in
2005, is a carbon-easy, sustainability-leading building and was the first
community college building in the US to receive a LEED platinum rating. It’s a
favored location for Silicon Valley conferences and events.
DeAnza College consistently ranks #1
or #2 in the state annually for the number of students who transfer to the
University of California and California State University campuses. The college
ranked #10 in the CNN Money listing of top community colleges in 2012. DeAnza
ranked #45 in the 2010 Washington Monthly ranking of the top 100 U.S. community
colleges.
