As the Southern University website is filled with the “SU is ranked among the best”, U.S. News and World Report ranks Southern University at No. 34 in a two-way tie with Grambling State University.
According to the U.S. News and World Report website, “The indicators we use to capture academic quality fall into a number of categories: assessment by Administrators at peer institutions, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, and alumni giving.”
Southern received a score of 32 out of 100 with the highest weighted information missing from their profile, placing our university in the bottom of the first half of ranks.
Most data comes from colleges to ensure accuracy through surveying each college.
The percentages of full-time, part-time, female, and male undergraduate students seeking degrees, enrollment, and graduates were not available with retention counting for 25 percent of the rank.
“We obtain missing data from the American Association of University Professors, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Council for Aid in Education, and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics,” said U.S. News and World Report’s website.
The data for Southern University’s Fall 2009 term is not available, and the Office of Planning, Assessment, and Institutional Research hasn’t published a SU Fact Book since Fall of 2008-Spring 2009.
These powerful ranks are available online and used when students choose a college or university to attend.
Bethany Lightfoot, a junior nursing major from Franklin, La., stated, “I feel that’s it’s sad that we are ranked that low. It’s a tragedy that we have been deceived about our ranking and we were never in the top.”
Lightfoot continued, “We should work harder as students to be among the top five. It should be a collective effort of Southern University to reach a better rank.”
Southern University for the past three years has been publicizing that it is ranked among the top HBCUs while, our scores are still less than the top 50 percentile.
“I think that if the administration would tell us the truth we could work harder to reach a higher rank. Southern isn’t what it used to be and we needed to be further up on the list. If we know where we are ranked then, we can create a collective effort to raise our institution up,” said Kate McConnell, sophomore political science major from Boston, Massachusetts.
With the decline of 5 ranks and a tie for 34th we have been declining in the indicators of a productive higher learning institution.
“It’s a little disappointing that we fell five places because of academic reasons. The only thing we can do now is try improving the way we approach our university and get better,” shared Maria Harmon a graduating senior political science major from Lake Charles.
Southern University will have to collectively recruit, retain and graduate to bring our rank back up in the 2012 U.S. News and World Report rankings.
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Students surprised by SU’s ranking
September 2, 2010
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