About

Elgin Community College (ECC) is a comprehensive, fully accredited public institution recognized by the Aspen Institute as one of the top 25 community colleges in the United States. ECC offers something for everyone, from career and technical education to associate degrees or continuing education classes, child care, and arts center events for the community. 

Our Community

At ECC, you'll join a welcoming community of faculty and staff who care about your success. Our 11,000 students and more than 66,000 alumni represent diverse backgrounds, ages, career interests, and goals while sharing a strong sense of community and a commitment to success. ECC is designated a Hispanic Serving Institution by the US Department of Education. Check out these "Fast Facts" about ECC students.

Beautiful Campus in a Great Location

ECC is conveniently located halfway between Chicago and Rockford in Illinois and easily accessible from several major highways. Its 145-acre Spartan Drive Campus features smart classrooms, facilities, and equipment that mirror what is used in the workforce, a vibrant and engaging campus experience, and support services that help students succeed. See the Virtual Campus Tour.

The 120-acre Elgin Community College Center for Emergency Services, based in Burlington, features classrooms, a three-story burn tower, training bays, and a diving pond to train current and future first responders.

ECC also serves its community through the Education and Work Center in Hanover Park. The center—a partnership between Harper College, the village of Hanover Park, the Chicago-Cook Workforce partnership, and the state of Illinois—offers English as a second language, adult basic education, and career skills development.

Indigenous Land Acknowledgment

We acknowledge that Elgin Community College currently sits on the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe peoples: the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and many other Native tribes. Let this land acknowledgment contribute to a continuing, profound, respectful relationship between ECC and Native peoples.

Programs for Everyone

Choose from 131 degree and certificate programs and dozens of continuing education classes. Whether you want to take a coding boot camp through continuing education or earn an in-demand certificate in CNC Programming or Fire Science, ECC is the place for you.

A Great Value

Tuition is a fraction of what you would pay at any other school. In addition to quality instruction taught by our esteemed faculty, we offer generous scholarships and financial aid packages that bring your costs down even further. Why choose anywhere else? 

A Leader College

Elgin Community College is nationally recognized as a Leader College of Distinction by Achieving the Dream, Inc., a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping more community college students, particularly low-income students and students of color, stay in school and earn a college certificate or degree.

In 2021, The Aspen Institute named Elgin Community College one of the top 150 community colleges in the United States, and we received the same honor in 2013, 2017, and 2019. ECC is the only Chicago-land community college recognized as an Aspen Prize Top 150 college more than two times. In 2022, ECC was named among 25 colleges nationwide as a semifinalist for the 2023 $1 million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the signature recognition of high achievement and performance among America's community colleges.

Eligible colleges must show strong and improving student outcomes in critical areas, including retention, completion, transfer, and equity. ECC and the other colleges selected for this honor stand out among more than 1,000 community colleges nationwide as having high and improving student success and equitable outcomes for Black and Hispanic students and those from lower-income backgrounds. Eligibility for the Aspen Prize is based on publicly available data. Nationwide, 15 percent of community colleges (150 of the approximately 1,000 public two-year colleges nationwide assessed for the Prize) have been invited to apply—see the complete list on the Prize homepage.