Stanford University is at number two, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in third, Yale University in fourth and Duke University in fifth. All those schools were also placed in the top five last year. Nine of last year’s top 10 are back, as are 19 of last year’s top 20.
(You can view our full ranking as well as sort the entire ranking by a variety of measures and re-weight the main contributing factors to reflect what’s most important to you. Or you can choose any two Compare colleges in more detail.)
Why is the ranking at the top so stable? Partly because the world outside those university walls is so unstable. Schools with the spending power to deal with falling revenues and rising costs have ranked well in the rankings they have experienced as a result of the pandemic. Overall, of the top 20 schools, except two are included in the top 20 for all educational resources; The other two are ranked 21st and 26th in terms of resources.
The WSJ/THE ranking is based on 15 factors in four main categories: Forty percent of each school’s overall score comes from student outcomes, which include graduates’ salaries and loans; 30% comes from educational resources, including how much the college spends on tuition; 20% from student engagement, in which students feel ready to use their learning in the real world, and 10% from learning environments, including the diversity of the student body and academic staff.
The rankings partly rely on data collected before pandemic-related shutdowns and the move to online education, and do not weigh increasingly important considerations such as the quality of distance learning or personal health and safety practices. Nevertheless, the importance of fundamentals such as tuition costs and student-body diversity during the pandemic remains largely the same. (For more on how this year’s rankings were determined, read the full methodology.)
results and prices
Some colleges focus on ranking input: They measure the quality of students attending a university, considering their standardized-test scores and rankings from their high-school graduating class. Other lists give significant importance to outside opinion, asking university administrators if they think competing colleges are doing a good job. But the WSJ/The College rankings focus on output, emphasizing the return on investment that students see after graduation. Graduates from the best-performing schools on this list are generally satisfied with their educational experience and find relatively high-paying jobs that can help them pay off student loans.
A subset of the rankings that focus on student outcomes are led by Yale and Princeton University in first place, followed by Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Duke, all tied at No. All six schools graduate students who go on to earn relatively high salaries. And Princeton especially leaves students who participate in federal financial aid programs with a relatively light debt burden—the third-lowest amount of graduate debt in a complete list of nearly 800 schools in the ranking. (Since the WSJ/The ranking is based on salaries 10 years after graduation, it does not reflect the experience of recent grads, many of whom are wrestling with record levels of unemployment due to the pandemic.)
The ranking also measures the best value among the top 250 schools by dividing each institution’s total score by its net worth. By this measure, the No. 1 school is the City College of New York, the flagship of the public City University of New York (CUNY) system. Runner-up was another CUNY school, the Bernard M. There’s Baruch College, followed by Berea College, a private liberal-arts school in Kentucky that charges students no tuition. (The US Naval Academy and the US Military Academy, the two service academies on the list also do not charge tuition, but because students are obliged to enter active-duty military service upon graduation, these schools are required to be included. Not considered. Best value ranking.) The only two schools ranked in the top 10 for best value are private universities—Beria and Stanford.
inclusive environment
The subset of WSJ/The Rankings that focuses on the collegiate environment—specifically the racial and ethnic diversity of students and faculty, the need-based federal Pell grants of undergraduates and the percentage of international students—is led by La Sierra University, Riverside. , a small Seventh-day Adventist school in California. About half of La Sierra graduates receive Pell grants; 48% of graduates are Hispanic, 17% are Asian, 12% are White and 7% are Black.
Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey comes in second in the environmental rankings, followed by California State University, Northridge, University of California, Irvine and San Francisco State University, all in third place. Overall, 14 schools in California are ranked in the top 20 schools in this category.
As last summer’s protests and debate about racial inequalities continued to shape conversations throughout the academic year, higher-than-usual numbers of minority students dropped out due to job losses and other stresses caused by the continuing pandemic.
Lynn Pascarella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, says, “This is a moment of racial reckoning. COVID-19 has had a hugely negative impact on communities of color, and the greatest losses in colleges have occurred among 18- to 25-year-olds.” Black and Latinx men.”
Frederica Wilson (D., Fla.), chair of the House Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee, is proposing a new approach to that problem.
“When I discuss this issue with my constituency, I always point to historically black colleges and universities as solutions,” says Rep. “HBCUs are at the heart of addressing our nation’s long-term education and racial-equity failures,” he says. “A large percentage of HBCU students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and attending college is one of their best chances to escape the cycle of poverty and build a successful future.”
Rep. Wilson says she is working on legislation that would ask the federal government to provide funds to enable African-origin children to be HBCU tuition-free, and free of graduate student-loan debt. She says the program will help disadvantaged students stay in college and help protect the schools themselves. “Many thousands are bleeding students, and relative to other four-year institutions, they don’t have the same access to strong endowments or private funding streams,” says Rep. Wilson.
development of education
Meanwhile, with the coronavirus still spreading through American communities, universities have had to figure out new ways to teach in a crisis. While some schools have kept most classes online, others have turned to technology to get students back on campus.
“We made our way through Covid. “We didn’t fire anybody, we didn’t fire anybody, and we didn’t cut anyone’s pay,” says Arizona State University president Michael Crow. you have done this before. And the reason we were able to work through it is that we kept using the technology.”
Last spring, instead of relying on outside labs performing nasal-swab tests to check anyone who came to class for infection, Mr. Crowe directed one of the school’s engineering labs to create a better solution. . They came up with a high-speed automated testing system – called the Mr. Crow robot – that can conduct thousands of tests a day on the premises itself.
“When you enter a building you just pick up a small tube, when you get to your desk, spit it in, drop it and get your results the next day,” says Mr. Crow. “We’ve done a million tests with that robot. If you want to test every day, you can test every day.”
ASU also invested in new technology to meet the needs of students who are still not comfortable coming to campus. Mr. Crowe says, “We designed and launched 50 new online degrees. We are a better institution, not because of Covid, but because we have decided to serve students to the maximum and adopt different strategies.”
Many institutions have found that online classes – which just a year ago were regarded as an inferior but temporarily essential approach to teaching – have significant value.
“Today’s students learn differently than we did when they grew up,” says Florida State University president Richard McCullough, who ranks 173rd and 44th overall among public schools. “They’re fast and furiously used to electronic information. We’ve learned more about doing online learning than we’re learning, and have gotten more sophisticated about using it as a learning tool.”
Mr McCullough expects online classes to continue to be popular even after the campus is completely safe for students to meet. “It’s always a good idea to give students alternative ways of learning,” he says.
facing the future
As more students return to campuses in the fall, it is unclear whether many high-school grads will choose to attend college in the coming years.
“There has been a seven-year decline in public confidence in higher education in the US, where people are saying it is too expensive, too hard to access and doesn’t teach people 21st century skills,” says Ms Pascarella of the Association of Associations. Is.” American Colleges and Universities. The emergence of distance learning during the pandemic has raised new questions about the value of higher education, she says. “Now they feel that online face-to-face isn’t worth it.”
For those with these kinds of doubts, especially concerns related to the pandemic, Ms. Pascarella says she can advise upper-middle class or wealthy students to wait a year before deciding whether to go to college. Huh. “Take the year off and serve others. Join AmeriCorps or Teach for America. Go and find out what it’s like to live a different life,” she says.
But students coming from working-class homes should be wary of taking the same advice, she says. “If you’re on the lowest socioeconomic rung, don’t take the time off,” says Ms. Pascarella. “Because if you do, studies show you won’t get into college, and if you drop out you won’t come back. Go ahead, get your education, and don’t stop.”
For those planning to enter college, rankings remain useful tools that students and families can use to help decide where to go. But that said, a school’s ranking shouldn’t be the final word on whether or not a school’s ranking is right for any applicant. Some students may benefit from a strong engineering program, while others may seek a liberal-arts education or a thriving sports community. The WSJ/THE ranking is intended to serve as a starting point for families to consider their options: the “best” school in the world may not be the best for you.
Whether they are at the top or bottom of these rankings, all these schools are capable of producing exceptional students. Success in college, just like in life and business, is a matter of what you do with the opportunity..
Don’t miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint.
download
Our App Now!!
.