September 22, 2020

Susquehanna University is listed again in the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranking of the nation’s top colleges and universities.

Susquehanna has been listed in the ranking, which primarily measures student success and learning, every year since its inception in 2017. The university’s nationwide rank is No. 215 out of the 797 schools that made the list, and No. 82 out of the 257 northeastern schools that were profiled.

Susquehanna ranks at 214 in terms of outcomes, rising 11 spaces from last year’s ranking. Outcomes measures graduate salaries, graduation rate, graduates’ abilities to repay student debt and academic reputation.

The WSJ/THE rankings emphasize how well a college prepares students for life after graduation. The overall ranking is based on 15 factors across four categories: 40% of each school’s overall score comes from student outcomes, including a measure of graduate salaries; 30% from the resources a school devotes to academics; 20% from how well it engages its students; and 10% from the diversity of its students and staff.

Normally, the rankings include thousands of student surveys. However, this survey was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the 2021 ranking, the data for the three student engagement metrics was not updated, and instead included the scores obtained by institutions last year.

A full methodology can be found here, along with the complete list of schools.

Data for the ranking comes from a variety of sources: the U.S. government (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System – IPEDS), the College Scorecard, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Times Higher Education’s U.S. Student and Academic, and the Elsevier bibliometric dataset.