Gustavus Adolphus College ranks 144th among colleges and universities across the United States in the first-ever Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education (WSJ/THE) College Rankings, which were released this week. The new ranking system assesses education, graduate outcomes, and the student experience to evaluate colleges across four areas: “Capacity” for teaching, “Capability” for engaging students, “Credibility” in terms of producing strong outcomes, and “Community.”
The Gustavus ranking of 144 is out of 1,061 institutions measured, which includes public and private colleges and universities of varying size. The College is third among Minnesota private colleges behind Carleton and Macalester.
The WSJ/THE rankings were created to emphasize student experience and outcomes, a departure from traditional college measurements, which focus largely on an institution’s financial resources and reputation in the marketplace.
Overall, the methodology looks at resources (30 percent), engagement (20 percent), outcomes (40 percent), and environment (10 percent) to assign each college its ranking.
Gustavus garnered particularly strong scores in the engagement category, with student engagement at 88.7, student recommendation at 88.1, and student interaction at 91.0. The outcomes section included high marks for graduation rate (90.5) and graduate salary (84.0).
“At Gustavus, we pair students with talented faculty members who take a personal interest in their development both inside and outside the classroom,” Associate Vice President and Dean of Admission Richard Aune said. “The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education rankings affirm that our focus on the student experience leads to great outcomes after graduation.”
To gather data for the rankings, the WSJ/THE team compiled information from the U.S. government, the Elsevier bibliometric dataset, and surveys of students and academics conducted by Times Higher Education. To learn more about the WSJ/THE methodology, visit the Times Higher Education website.
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