SRU named a 2017 top 100 “best value” university

Sept. 26, 2015

SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. - Slippery Rock University has been named among the top 100 "best value" universities nationally in the annual outcomes-based, ETC College Ranking Index for 2017, which is produced by the nonprofit, Educate to Career.

"Our ETC College Rankings Index is unique in that we are a nonprofit with a focus on the students and improving their college-to-career outcomes through the development and dissemination of data and free online programs," said Michael Havis, president and founder of Educate to Career.

"Unlike other ranking systems, we rank the universities, not the students. By this I mean that the schools that rank high in typical college ranking lists are schools that generally admit the highest academic achievers. In essence it is the students that rank high- not necessarily the school itself. As we use data and analytics in our methodology, we know that these high-performing students enjoy positive outcomes no matter where they attend college - or even if they drop out of college, or never go to college.

"We rank colleges based on the added value that they bring to their graduates in terms of the increase in employability and earnings that their grads derive from attending the college."

To ensure neutrality, ETC neither requests nor accepts data from universities, rather it retains a third party that produces the Index for them from data pulled from numerous publicly available sources.

Some of the metrics used in calculating the ETC College Rankings Index are:

• Percentage of graduates employed in occupations which utilize their field of study;
• Average salary earned by recent graduates, by school for each major category (adjusted for region, occupation and other variables);
• Percentage of persons employed within one year of graduation;
• Major, referenced against similarly situated students at other institutions;
• Graduation rate and the number of years to graduate;
• Tuition (in-state, net cost);
• Loan default rates; and
• Other proprietary input variables which norm students to a common standard for each school and major

One other State System university, Millersville, was also ranked in the top 100 "best value" schools.

The college rankings can be found at: https://www.jobsearchintelligence.com/etc/college-rankings-result.php.

MEDIA CONTACT: Robb King | 724.738.2199 | robert.king@sru.edu