This article will not tell you whether Bates Technical College is “good” or “bad.” Framed that way, the question does not even make sense. What I can do is show you, using the official data that the United States government collects from this institution, what kind of school it is, whom it serves, what it really costs, and what happens to the people who enroll there. With that information, you can decide what questions to ask next.
What Kind of School Bates Technical College Is
Let’s start with the basics, because this is where many misunderstandings can be cleared up before they begin.
Bates Technical College is in Tacoma, Washington, in Pierce County, within the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area. That does not mean the campus is right in the center of a large city; it means the surrounding region is urban. If your son plans to live at home and drive every day, I recommend something simple: drive the route yourself on a weekday, at the exact time he would have class. The actual travel time is almost never what the map says.
It is a public two-year institution. In the federal classification system, “two-year” means that its programs last at least two years but less than four. The highest level it reports offering is a postsecondary credential, certificate, or diploma in that range, not a bachelor’s degree. This is general institutional information; it does not tell you which specific credential your son would receive in his particular program, so you need to ask admissions directly.
The Carnegie Classification—an academic system that groups colleges by what they do, not by how good they are—places Bates in the “Associate's Colleges: High Career & Technical” category. That means a high proportion of its associate degrees and certificates are in career and technical fields. Carnegie does not measure employment, does not measure whether students find jobs afterward, and does not guarantee that credits will transfer to a four-year college. It is a snapshot of what kind of school it is, not a rating.
And here is something worth stating very clearly: Bates Technical College does not have any of the three special designations in this system—it is not a historically Black college or university, a tribal college or university, or a land-grant institution. Of the 3,012 colleges in this national directory, only 138 have any of those three designations. The fact that Bates does not have them says nothing about which communities it serves or how your son would feel there. Ask directly: which cultural centers currently exist, which student organizations are available, and, if possible, whether you can speak with someone who is already studying there.
Who Else Will Be in the Classroom with Your Son
If your son enrolls at Bates Technical College directly after high school, there is something important he should know: he will be among the youngest people on campus.
Of the undergraduate students reported in fall 2023, 64 out of every 100 are between the ages of 25 and 64. This is an adult undergraduate population, not one made up of newly graduated 18-year-olds. Fourteen out of every 100 students are Hispanic or Latino—a small minority, although Bates ranks above the midpoint when compared with the other 587 public two-year schools nationwide that report this information. There are more men than women: out of every 100 students, 41 are women. And 95 out of every 100 first-time students reported living in the same state as the institution when they applied. It is a predominantly local school.
As for size: 3,817 students were enrolled in the official fall count, placing it in the middle compared with its peers—neither among the largest nor the smallest, but right at the midpoint. All are undergraduates; there is no graduate enrollment. But one detail matters a great deal: with so many part-time students, the total enrollment does not tell you how many people are in a classroom at the same time on a Tuesday at ten in the morning. Ask directly what times courses are offered in the program your son is interested in. Do not assume a traditional schedule.
How the Academic Calendar Works and What Happens with Previous Credits
Bates Technical College operates on a quarter system: the year is divided into three terms of approximately 12 weeks each, with the possibility of a fourth term in the summer. The dates are fixed and the same for everyone.
Something that could save your family time and money: the school reported that it accepts credit from AP exams as well as what is called “credit for life experience”—learning acquired through independent study, adult courses, work experience, portfolios, previous licenses, or military training. It also enrolls high school students in college courses for credit, treating them as regular students.
But here is the hard truth, the one that cannot be softened: a school’s statement that it accepts AP does not mean it will award credit for every exam your son takes. This information does not tell us what scores are required, how many credits are actually awarded, or whether those credits will count toward the specific program he wants. Request the equivalency evaluation in writing before enrolling. Do not calculate any savings until you have it in hand.
One point worth emphasizing about what Bates Technical College does not offer: in the most recent federal degrees report, it does not appear as awarding any bachelor’s degrees. This is normal—of the 587 public two-year schools in this census, 586 are in the same situation. None awarded bachelor’s degrees that year. But if your son’s ultimate plan is to earn a bachelor’s degree, verify now, in writing, which transfer agreements Bates has with four-year colleges and which courses will be recognized. That question should be asked at the beginning, not after he has already completed two years of coursework.
Regarding relative group size, the institution-wide ratio is 21 full-time-equivalent students for every full-time-equivalent faculty member. Compared with similar schools, that places it in the highest quarter—a high aggregate ratio. But be careful: this number is not a class size. It is an overall relationship between the entire enrollment and the entire instructional staff. It does not tell you whether your son’s biology class will have 15 students or 40. You need to request that information separately.
How Admission Works: Open Admission and What It Does and Does Not Mean
Bates Technical College has an open-admission policy for all or most of its first-time undergraduate students. The application fee is $0.
This sounds straightforward, and for the most part it is. But “open admission” is not the same as “no conditions.” The classification describes the general policy; it does not automatically guarantee the admission of every person or admission to every program. A specific program within the school may have its own entrance requirements. That is precisely why, because admission is open, the federal system does not require Bates to report how many applicants it had, how many it admitted, what percentage enrolled after being accepted, or how it uses exams such as the SAT or ACT. Those blank fields do not reflect a lack of transparency by the school: under open admission, those questions simply do not apply.
What this means in practice is that there is no “acceptance rate” to analyze here, as there would be at a selective college. What you should do is confirm directly with the program your son is interested in whether it has its own requirements or capacity limit.
Regarding students who transfer from another institution: in fall 2023, 164 undergraduate students entered Bates for the first time after previously studying at another college. This is a count of people, not a proportion, and it places the school in the lower half compared with similar schools—although that goes hand in hand with its size. How many credits were recognized for those students is an entirely different question, and it must be answered directly by the school.
The Real Cost: What Is Published and What Families End Up Paying
At Bates Technical College, among 39 first-time, full-time, credential-seeking students who received federal Title IV aid, paid the in-state or in-district rate, and whose EFC records showed family income below $30,000, the average net price was $3,340. Among 11 students from the same population with EFC family income from $48,001 to $75,000, it was $6,006; among 3 students with EFC family income above $110,000, it was $13,718. For dependent students, the band combines their parents’ income with their own.
The difference between the average for the lowest-income band (39 students) and the highest-income band (3 students) is $10,378. Among first-year students who received any grant or scholarship aid, the average was $6,434.
Among the 583 schools of the same type and control included in this census that reported this information with the same time coverage, Bates falls within the least expensive quarter for the lowest-income families after grants and scholarships are subtracted. That does not mean it will be inexpensive for your family. It is a factor to weigh when you build the list of schools to which your son will apply.
The income bands in this profile describe first-time, full-time, credential-seeking students who received federal Title IV aid; at this public institution, they use the in-state or in-district rate. The overall average with grant or scholarship aid, when shown, describes first-time, full-time, credential-seeking students who received federal, state, local, or institutional grants or scholarships; it also uses that rate. If your family lives outside the state or district, the calculation is different. Ask about it before applying.
Grants, Pell, and Loans: A Clear Explanation of Aid
Thirty-five out of every 100 degree- or certificate-seeking students at Bates received some grant or scholarship aid that does not have to be repaid. The other 65 received none. Compared with similar schools, Bates falls within the quarter where grants and scholarships reach fewer students. Among those who did receive them, the average was $8,963 per year.
Nineteen out of every 100 students received Pell Grants, the federal aid for families with demonstrated financial need. That is a low percentage.
Here is something important that I want to tell you directly because I know the weight of a misinterpretation: the fact that most students here did not receive grants or scholarships does not mean your son will be denied them. It also does not mean he will receive them. This data records what already happened to others, not what will happen in your particular case. What I do recommend doing before applying is requesting the complete list of available grants and scholarships, who qualifies for each one, and each application deadline. And when a financial aid offer arrives, review separately how much of that package must be repaid. A package can look large on paper and consist almost entirely of loans.
And now the figure I most want you to see clearly, because it is the most prominent in this entire financial picture: in the 2022-23 school year, only 2 out of every 100 Bates Technical College undergraduate students had a federal student loan. That is very few—fewer than one in ten. Among those who did borrow, the average amount was $5,316 for the year. Compared with similar schools, Bates is on the low side: seven out of ten similar schools had a higher proportion of students with debt.
I am not telling you that no one at Bates takes on debt to pay for school. I am telling you that, according to what is reported here, the vast majority of its students are not financing their education with federal loans. This does not tell us how the others paid—there may have been grants or scholarships, employment, family savings, or another kind of debt not recorded in this report. And that average of $5,316 does not include Parent PLUS loans sometimes taken out by parents, debt from private banks, or credit card debt. Nor is it the total debt someone has upon graduating; it covers only one year.
The institution also reports offering an installment tuition payment plan as an additional way to manage the cost.
Campus Life, Learning Format, and Available Support
Bates Technical College does not provide its own housing—neither residence halls nor apartments under its control, on or off campus—and does not report meal plans. This does not mean the official financial aid budget ignores the cost of living off campus; that budget does include separate housing and food estimates. Request the specific budget that financial aid would use for your situation.
It does not participate in intercollegiate athletics or belong to any national athletic association. If sports are an important part of your son’s plan, this information matters to the decision, although it is worth asking directly whether intramural leagues or sports clubs are available—a club is not the same as a college team, but it may exist without appearing in this report.
It also did not indicate any ROTC opportunities in its most recent report. Of the two-year institutions in this guide, only 45 out of 843 indicated that they had them; Bates was not among them. If that scholarship or military path is important to your family, ask admissions directly before ruling out the school entirely—this field shows what was reported, not necessarily everything that exists.
As for distance education, it is offered at the undergraduate level. Fourteen out of every 100 students took their entire course load through distance education, while the other 86 took at least one class in person. The school also reported offering at least one complete program that can be finished entirely through distance education, although you should confirm the level and the specific program your son is interested in.
The library has hired staff, annual expenditures of $100,000 or more, physical and digital materials, and interlibrary lending. The $100,000 is only the minimum threshold the government asks about, not a measure of how good the collection is. If your son will combine work and study, I recommend asking directly about library hours—whether it is open at night or on weekends matters more than the total budget.
Among the services and support the institution reports are combined academic and career counseling, employment services for current students, placement services for those who complete their programs, on-campus childcare, a dedicated point of contact for veterans and military personnel, a veterans’ student organization, and a published web address for services for people with disabilities. The fact that these services are reported does not by itself guarantee their quality or effectiveness; they are a starting point for asking more questions.
What Happens to Students Who Enroll: Retention and Graduation
This is perhaps the section most worth reading carefully, because this is where the official data directly touches the question every family asks: if my son enrolls here, how likely is he to finish?
Of the cohort of first-time, full-time students who entered in fall 2022, 64 out of every 100 met the official retention criterion: they were still enrolled at the school or had already completed their program one year later. Interestingly, part-time students had a higher outcome: 71 out of every 100. This does not demonstrate that studying part time is better; it is simply what the data for that specific cohort shows. Compared with similar schools, Bates ranks just above the midpoint of the group.
Not enrolling again is not the same as dropping out. This rate does not distinguish between someone who successfully transferred to another institution and someone who stopped studying altogether. If your son’s plan is to use these two years as a bridge to a four-year college, that is precisely the information you need to request separately: the transfer rate, which is a different measure from retention.
Regarding graduation: of the cohort of first-time, full-time, degree- or certificate-seeking students who entered in 2020, 30 out of every 100 completed a program at this institution within 150% of the normal time. This is a historical cohort, not a prediction about your son. The figure follows only those who entered for the first time and attended full time; it does not represent students who transferred in or those who started part time.
And now I want to take you to the broadest figure of all, the one that looks the farthest into the future. IPEDS followed a complete cohort of 3,215 undergraduate students who entered Bates Technical College between July 2015 and June 2016—including both students entering for the first time and those with previous college experience, attending full time and part time. As of August 2023, eight years later:
34 out of every 100 had earned a degree or certificate from this school. The other 66 had not.
That is less than half. This is one of the most important figures in this entire picture, and I want to tell you plainly: most of that broad cohort does not appear as having earned a Bates credential eight years later. The data does not explain why. We do not know whether those people transferred to another school and graduated there, stopped studying because of work or family responsibilities, or simply took longer than this measurement window can capture.
But within that same figure, there is something worth examining closely. Among students who received Pell Grants—the federal aid for low-income families—55 out of every 100 did finish with a Bates degree or certificate within those eight years. That is 28 percentage points above the group that did not receive Pell Grants. The data does not explain the cause; it shows only what happened. And if, instead of looking at the entire broad cohort, you look only at first-time, full-time students—the group most similar to a student coming directly from high school—the figure rises to 46 out of every 100, twelve points above the overall average.
Change whom you count, and the number changes. That is why, if your son enrolls at Bates for the first time directly from high school and attends full time, his closest comparison point is not 34%, but 46%. It is still less than half. It is a figure that calls for specific questions: what academic support is available today, what exactly happened with that cohort, and why your son’s college list should include more than one option, not only this one.
This percentage, moreover, applies to the entire school—it is not reported program by program. If your son has a specific program in mind, you need to request that program-level success information directly from the appropriate department.
What You Already Know and What You Need to Do with It
You now know something real about Bates Technical College: it is a public two-year school in Tacoma with open admission, a predominantly adult and local community, a net price that for low-income families may rank among the more affordable options in the country, very few students carrying federal debt, and an eight-year graduation rate that, viewed honestly, leaves most of a broad cohort without a credential from this particular institution—although that figure improves notably for students who enter full time directly from high school and improves even more among those with Pell Grants.
None of this tells you whether Bates is the right school for your son. That depends on three things this article cannot know: what he wants to study and where he wants to go afterward, what he has built so far through his preparation, and what your family can and is willing to pay. With all the depth the official data permits, this piece has given you only the first part of that puzzle: what this college really is, beyond its name and the first impression.
Combine it with the other two. A plan your family can sustain comes from that combination, not from a single data point or a single figure.
Source: The information in this article comes from data reported by Bates Technical College to the United States Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), corresponding primarily to the years 2022 and 2023, depending on the indicator. Best College Aid does not represent Bates Technical College or any government agency; this piece organizes and explains existing public information.