(Posted October 4, 2016)

Photo by Candice Hersh
Photo by Candice Hersh

    HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Juniata college is rated 210th out of the 800 top colleges and universities in the nation in the inaugural Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranking.

            The first college rankings poll ever released by the Wall Street Journal and the Times Higher Education based its assessment on learning environment, debt burden, graduation rates, student-faculty ratios, faculty-published research, amount budgeted for instruction and academic services, alumni earning power and more than 100,000 survey responses from students across the country.

            “Being rated in the upper half of all the top educational institutions in the nation is truly an honor, particularly since this is the first poll from these two prestigious news organizations,” says James A. Troha, president of Juniata College. “Our students and their families are proud to be part of Juniata’s educational experience and inclusion in this poll will certainly add to that.”

            The ranking is based on 15 factors within four categories: Forty percent of an individual institution’s score comes from student outcomes, including how they fare after leaving campus, 30 percent from the college’s resources, 20 percent from how much students are engaged in what they are learning, and 10 percent from the learning environment, or diversity.

            The ranking are, “driven entirely by what matters most to students and families,” says Phil Baty, ranking editor at Times Higher Education, a London company owned by the private equity firm TPG Capital. “The survey gets to the heart of what good teaching really is and how much a university is capable of stimulating and engaging students.”

"Being rated in the upper half of all the top educational institutions in the nation is truly an honor, particularly since this is the first poll from these two prestigious news organizations."

James A. Troha, president of Juniata College.

The poll ranked each college individually through the first 500 institutions and then ranked colleges and universities in sections from 501 to 800.

Juniata shares the 210 slot with four other colleges: College of St. Benedict, in St. Joseph, Minn.; University of Scranton, in Scranton, Pa.; Washington & Jefferson College, in Washington, Pa.; and Wofford College, in Spartanburg, S.C.

“Parents and students want to find a school that offers excellence, fosters intellectual development, provides practical skills, and, critically important, positions its graduates to find a good job,” says Gerard Baker, editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal. “These are the criteria ant underpin (the) rankings.”

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.