For the third year in a row, U.S. News & World Report has named Nicholls State University as a top public regional university (Top Southern College) in Louisiana, reports a Nicholls press release.
The 2021 report from U.S. News & World was released in mid September of 2020, and it ranks Nicholls as 35th among top public regional universities in the South, and it names the school as the 80th best southern college regional university, including private schools. This ranking in particular makes Nicholls the second best in the state of Louisiana, with Xavier University of Louisiana ranking as 16th.
This recent ranking of 35th and 80th amongst Southern Colleges is an impressive improvement for Nicholls from 2019 in which the State University ranked 38th and 84th, respectively, and as many news outlets have reported in 2020, Nicholls is certainly on the rise across disciplines, departments, and campus.
President Dr. Jay Clune said of the report, “while these rankings do not define us, they are a public assessment of our improvement as an institution and impact on the Bayou Region.” This humble acknowledgment of the ranking was accompanied by Sr. Clune stating, “I am pleased to see continued improvement among the rankings in the U.S. News & World Report College Rankings. Their formula places an emphasis on the education, retention and graduation of students, and so do we.”
Now, for the second year in a row, Nicholls has specifically ranked among the top southern colleges for social mobility, a division that is calculated by comparing each university’s Pell Grant recipient graduation rates with those of their non-Pell Grant-receiving peers.
This annual report generated by U.S. News & World categorizes its list of universities into four regions: northern, eastern, western, and southern; “regional” is defined by the group as any university that offers a plethora of undergraduate degrees, some master’s degrees, and a few doctoral programs. Additionally, a “public university,” is one that is operating beneath the supervision of a state government, partially funded by tax dollars.
Each school included on the ranking is calculated by U.S. World & News studying each school’s retention rates, graduation rates, social mobility, academic reputation, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, and their alumni-giving rate. This year, the alumni-giving rate also measured student debt and increased the weight of each score that factored student outcomes.
Essentially every measurable metric by which to assess a university’s “rank” is taken into account, so it’s no large surprise that Nicholls University is among the top Louisiana colleges ranked.
U.S. News & World Report is a company that aims to empower people of the United States to make informed decisions about the important, pressing issues that affect their daily lives. The digital news and information company doesn’t take this service lightly, as many families look to this college ranking report each year when deciding where their rising seniors should apply, and rightly so, as the rankings are highly accurate, informative, and highly-encompassing. That is to say that the rankings are good indicators that a family’s money put into a college is “going to the right place,” if the attended school is higher on the list.
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