The 2012 College Rankings, the 28th annual list of what The U.S. News & World Report calls the nation’s best colleges, received much fanfare; an overwhelming horde of Internet surfers crashed the magazine’s website when the rankings were published September 13th. This is demonstrative of the Ranking’s pertinent impact on college admissions; one in five college students who enrolled full time at four-year colleges reported that rankings from national magazines were “very important in deciding which college to attend,” according to a 2009 study by the Higher Education Research Institute, which sponsors research.
Louisiana Tech University and Centenary College are the only north Louisiana colleges ranked. Louisiana Tech University jumped ahead in the rankings and is now recognized as a Tier 1 national university, placing 194th out of the top 200 colleges in the United States. Louisiana Tech also ranked in the top ten in the nation for graduating students with the least amount of debt. Centenary College, while not tiered, placed 171st among national liberal arts colleges. Not meeting the magazine’s ranking criteria are ULM and a host of north Louisiana colleges: Grambling State University [previously ranked as a Tier 2 historically black college], Louisiana State University–Shreveport and Northwestern State University.
The magazine’s methodology consists of sixteen academic indicators that include: academic reputation, alumni giving, faculty resources, and graduation and retention rates. These indicators are used to tabulate a college’s mean score and its subsequent place in the rankings. Some of the parameters such as alumni donations work against ULM. Alumni donations favor private institutions and compose 5 percent of the total score. Harvard and Princeton University are tied for first place in the rankings this year.
It is disadvantageous for ULM not to be ranked. Prospective students are unable to utilize the popular U.S. News & World’s College Rankings when evaluating ULM’s standing compared to other north Louisiana colleges. Also, ULM can not use its position in the rankings like ranked colleges can in order to attract more students and accrue additional grant and alumni monies meaning that ULM must rely on its individuality and its dynamic place as the academic center of Northeast Louisiana in order to attract future Warhawks.
