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8.20.08
Erskine ranked in top 100 colleges by Forbes.com
In an effort to provide an alternative to U.S. News & World Report's annual "Best Colleges" edition, Forbes.com has come up with its own set of rankings of higher education institutions across the country.
Released last week, the rankings list Erskine College 95th among 569 undergraduate institutions.
Forbes.com, in conjunction with Dr. Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), inaugurated the new rankings. In the report, CCAP ranks the institutions based on the quality of the education they provide and how much their students achieve.
"Erskine's ranking confirms what we have argued for years -- that we are the best buy among the best colleges in South Carolina and the nation," said Dr. Donald V. Weatherman, executive vice president and dean at Erskine. "This is probably why so many of our graduates end up in the best graduate programs in the nation as well."
Among colleges and universities in the state of South Carolina, only Wofford College was ranked ahead of Erskine and only those two schools were among the top 100 institutions.
Other South Carolina colleges and universities to make the list of 569 schools behind Erskine were Claflin, Furman, The Citadel, Presbyterian, University of South Carolina, Clemson and South Carolina State.
Forbes.com is straightforward about the intention of its first foray into college rankings.
"Competition is good," Forbes.com said of its new rankings. "Choosing a four-year undergraduate college is one of the biggest decisions a typical American family can make. And for too many years, information about the quality of American higher education has been monopolized by one publication, U.S. News & World Report. We offer an alternative."
CCAP's methodology focuses on evaluating institutions from a student's point of view by asking questions such as:
• How good will my professors be?
• Will the school help me achieve notable career success?
• If I have to borrow to pay for college, how deeply will I go into debt?
• What are the chances I will graduate in four years?
• Are students and faculty recognized nationally, or even globally?
To answer those questions, CCAP staff (mostly college students themselves) gathered data from a variety of sources. They based 25 percent of the rankings on 7 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com
Another 25 percent depended on how many of the school's alumni, adjusted for enrollment, are listed among notable people in Who's Who in America.
The other half of the ranking was based equally on three factors: the average amount of student debt at graduation held by those who borrowed; the percentage of graduates receiving their degrees in four years; and the number of students or faculty, adjusted for enrollment, who have won nationally competitive awards such as Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.
"The Forbes methodology is important because of the colleges and universities it did not include among the top 500 institutions," Weatherman said. "Dr. Richard Vedder is a well-known analyst of higher education and he adds even more credibility to the rankings."
The data showed that students "strongly prefer" smaller schools to big ones, as the median undergraduate enrollment in the top 50-ranked schools is about 2,300, and only one of the top 50 (the University of Virginia) has more than 10,000 undergraduate students.
"Small liberal arts schools shine in our rankings," Forbes.com said, "probably due to both the quality of their faculty and the personal attention they can provide."
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