WJR Business Beat: U.S. News & World Report Ranking of Top U.S. Colleges (Episode 477)

Good morning, Paul!

Here’s something all Michigander can be proud of. The U.S. News and World Report’s 2022-23 rankings of the best colleges in the U.S. has been released and the state of Michigan has 46 colleges ranked among the best higher institutions across various categories. Now, having a great educational system in our state, in particular at the college level, is really important because it acts as a pipeline to creating a capable talent, which leads to creating startups or joining companies already in existence here as part of the talent pool. Either way, great talent starts with a great education and it appears we’ve got some good options here in the state of Michigan.

Our top performer, the University of Michigan, ranks third tying with University of Virginia on the list of best public universities in the U.S., just behind the University of California, Los Angeles, and University of California, Berkeley. And Michigan ranked No. 25 overall whether public or private institutions here in the U.S. Michigan State’s also on the list. They’re in the Top 100 as well, ranking No. 77 on the national list.

Kim Castro, editor in chief content officer at U.S. News, said in a news release: “We do these rankings in order to provide useful data and information to help with one of life’s biggest decisions.”

Now U.S. News ranked 1,500 colleges and universities across 17 academic measures in this study. To compile the rankings, they focused on academic quality and placed emphasis on outcome measures, including graduation rates, retention rates, graduate indebtedness and social mobility. Graduation rates and other outcomes represented 40% of each school’s overall score.

And again, both the University of Michigan and Michigan State are doing extremely well in the overall rankings. Something to be proud of!

I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of startupnation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.