Scranton on 2019 National Ranking for Outcomes

The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranked The University of Scranton among “Top U.S. Colleges” in a 2019 listing that analyzes student outcomes after graduation, as well as their engagement while on campus to determine “how well a college will prepare students for life after graduation.”

Scranton’s highest rank was at No. 126 for student engagement, placing it in the top 15 percent of the ranking of nearly 1,000 colleges listed. Scranton also ranked at No. 182 for student outcomes; No. 260 for resources and No. 217 for an “overall” ranking based on analysis of 15 individual performance indicators.

The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education based the student engagement portion of their analysis on The U.S. Student Survey, which queried more than 189,000 current college and university students on a range of issues relating directly to their college experience, such as interaction with faculty and other students, and whether they would recommend their schools to others. Student engagement represented 20 percent of the overall ranking score. Outcomes, which represented 40 percent of the overall ranking score, looked at graduation rate, academic reputation, “value added” to graduate salary and “value added” to the loan repayment rate. The “value added” portions of the analysis applied statistical modeling to adjust for student, location and other characteristics in order to measure the impact the school has on the salary and loan repayment rates of its graduates. The ranking also measured resources invested in instruction and student services (30 percent), which included the finance cost per student, faculty/student ratio and research papers published per faculty member, and the learning environment (10 percent), which includes student and staff diversity, among other factors.

The ranking was published by The Wall Street Journal in September.