Best Online Colleges in Kentucky of 2025

University Headquarters (HQ) is an industry-leading, independent educational organization that provides independent college rankings using a proprietary formula to create first class, unbiased rankings. The team at University HQ strives to provide accurate and trustworthy rankings that highlight the best programs in Kentucky.

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Kentucky’s employment and unemployment numbers appear to be moving in the right direction in recent years. Employment is up, with 2,005,600 residents in the work force; between July 2021 and December 2021, the state added about 200,000 jobs. The unemployment rate also fell from a rate of 4.4% to around 3.9%.

While some employment sectors have seen a drop in employment numbers, the remainder of the state’s economy has been warming up. Most industries have stayed at about the same number of workers, while others have experienced a small increase. One of these experiencing an increase is the information sector. Leisure and hospitality also rebounded, with a 13.1% employment ranking.

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Online Higher Education in Kentucky

College students in Kentucky need to find ways of going to school that fit their individual situations. Here’s some information about your options.

How many students in Kentucky are enrolled in online programs?

Kentucky colleges report that, for the academic year of 2020-2021, 78,309 of their students are exclusively online; they do not attend any in-person classes. This may be for several reasons; they may work well in an online format or have family or work obligations that rule out in-person education.

Another 112,267 students are taking some online courses or degree programs, while their other classes take place on-campus.

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How many college students are there in Kentucky?
For the academic year 2020-2021, Kentucky colleges and universities enrolled 268,065 students altogether. Splitting this between undergraduate and graduate students, 207,484 were undergraduate and 60,581 were graduate students.
What is the average tuition for college students in Kentucky?
On average, in-state college students pay around $6,266 to attend school in Kentucky, while out-of-state students paid closer to $16,900. The highest tuition and fees that undergraduate students paid was $45,092 and the least expensive was $6,990. Graduate students paid $31,294 for their most expensive tuition and $25,100 for the least expensive.
What is the average cost of attendance at Kentucky colleges and universities?
The cost of attendance includes tuition and fees, books, supplies, room and board (for on-campus students), and other fees. The average cost of attendance for in-state students in 2021 was $20,232; for out-of-state students, it was $30,877.

Our School Rankings Methodology

While some data is reliable and more recent, students and parents should keep in mind that much of the university experience is more subjective. However, looking into the objective data can help you parse what is most important about subjective options.

Our data comes from several reliable resources. These are .gov education sources, such as the College Scorecard. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides the most-recent employment data, broken down by industries, occupations, states, and regions. And another website offers current snapshots of pay rates in various occupations.

We also use retention rates which measure the percentage of new first-year students who return for their next year, graduation rates which show the percentage of students who graduate within a normal time frame, admission rates which can show a university’s competitiveness (a low admission rate means the school is more competitive), and more.