WSJ Your Money Briefing - WSJ/College Pulse’s 2025 Ranking Includes 25 New Colleges in the Top 50

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

This year’s Wall Street Journal/College Pulse ranking measures how well each college sets graduates up for financial success. So which schools ended up on top? Wall Street Journal rankings editor Harry Carr joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ecolab Water for Climate. Less water, more growth. Results will vary. Learn more at Ecolab.com slash EWC. Ecolab Water for Climate. Transforming the way the world thinks about water. Here's your money briefing for Friday, September 6th. I'm JR Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. September 6th, I'm JR Whelan for the Wall Street Journal. Selecting a college can play an important role in a student achieving success after graduation. The Wall Street Journal has teamed up with College Pulse to rank the nation's best institutions.

Our ranking rewards making your students richer and not charging them through the nose for it and making sure that they graduate and ensuring that they're satisfied with the learning environment and the opportunity to mix with people from different backgrounds that the college provides. We'll go through the rankings with WSJ's Harry Carr after the break. You'll flip for $4 pancakes at A&W. Wake up to a stack of three light and fluffy pancakes topped with syrup. Only $4 on now. Dine in only until 11am.m. at ANW's in Ontario.

This year's Wall Street Journal and College Pulse rankings of the nation's top schools are out. Rankings editor Harry Carr joins me. Harry, the rankings primarily measure how well each college sets graduates up for financial success. What factors into that? We look at the median salaries of graduates 10 years after they enroll at the college, which is provided by the Department for Education's college scorecard, and we factor in how that compares A, to what you would expect those students to earn on the basis of their exam results before entering college, and the cost of living in the state the college is based regardless of which college they went to, and be the average net price of attending the college, including costs like tuitions

and fees, room and board, books and supplies, and taking into account things like grants and scholarships. But it isn't just measuring financial success. That is a really important factor, but we also do look at graduation rates, diversity, and the results of a huge student survey asking about the learning opportunities, learning facilities, and the career preparation that they're offered, and the extent to which they would recommend their college, and whether they would make the same choice again if they could start over. Princeton University topped the list. It has the highest graduation rate of any school in the ranking. What else helped it earn the top spot?

Our ranking rewards making your students richer and not charging them through the nose for it and making sure that they graduate and ensuring that they're satisfied with the learning environment and the opportunity to mix with people from different backgrounds that the college provides. And Princeton scores extremely well across the board on all of those factors. So its graduates make a lot of money. Its average net price is comparatively low. Its graduation rate is the highest

of any school in the ranking. And it has a relatively diverse student body and faculty. And its students rate the education they're getting highly. Half the colleges in the top 50 this year are new. They include large and small schools, public and private, plus technical and liberal arts institutions. What do they have in common? Our ranking does not make any assumptions about what works in helping students succeed. We just look at the outcomes that the students go on to, to understand which are doing the most to help

their students to flourish. So lots of the colleges have a STEM or business focus and do really well, but liberal arts colleges also hold their own. How much do testimonials from students or recent alumni contribute to a school's ranking? 25% of the overall ranking is on the basis of a gigantic survey that we conduct with college posts of current students and alumni who graduated within the last five years from each college. So 20% of the score is purely on the basis of that, looking at the learning opportunities they receive, the learning facilities, the career preparation that they're offered, and the extent to which they would recommend their

college and whether they would make the same choice. So again, if they could start over, the further 5% is half of the diversity score, which is looking at the extent to which students are satisfied with and the frequency of the interactions they get to have with people from different backgrounds. One thing I noticed in looking over the rankings is that there isn't one simple way that schools help set students up to succeed. We have some colleges with STEM focuses, some with business focuses, some liberal arts colleges do extremely well.

What we see when we go and talk to some of the colleges that do particularly well in our ranking, there's a lot of highly engaged alumni networks. Some have a particular focus on working with area businesses before students graduate. Some have developed in-classroom curricula that can adapt to the changing labor market, identifying trends in the labor market

and catering for those trends to make sure that their students will be set up with the skills that will mean that they go on to make more money and in the end, do well on the kind of rankings that we work on, as well as thinking about their students in a wider way. Last year, only two public schools were in the top 20, but this year, six made the list, including two in the top 20, but this year six made the list,

including two in the top 10. Private colleges do still dominate the top of the ranking overall, which is massively surprising. They tend to have larger funding, but there are lots of public colleges which are really holding their own, particularly actually in California. So 10 of the overall top 50 colleges, not just public colleges, but all colleges, are public schools from California. AC And as families and students decide where they want to pursue higher education, what questions should they ask themselves as they're reviewing the schools? CB Every ranking is different and there is no ranking which can be the perfect thing

for every individual reader and family who are making that kind of decision. What we emphasize in this ranking is the extent to which those schools will make you wealthier, will make sure that you're graduating, that will ensure that you have a really positive learning experience and learning environment when you're at the college, and that you're able to mix with people

from different backgrounds. We do have a range of other sub-rankings which are published alongside our main ranking. If you are interested in social mobility, we have a ranking which looks not only at the graduation rates and the graduate salaries of colleges, but also factors in more heavily the proportion of students who come from poorer backgrounds. If you're interested very specifically just in the best value colleges, we have one which takes everything else out and just looks at the bang for your buck that you get from the colleges. If you want to look primarily at the salary impact that you get out of each college,

we have a score which just looks at that, cuts out everything else. And if you want something more about the student experience whilst you are at the college, and less about the rest of your life after it, then we do have a ranking of that which is based on a set of questions which is not included in our main ranking, but which is asking about things like how nice and affordable the facilities are, the food is, the extracurricular stuff, the party scene, all that fun stuff. We do not include in our main ranking, it's not where our focus is. We know that people are interested in that and you can go and find that out as well. That's WSJ's Harry Carr.

And that's it for your money briefing. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly markets wrap up, what's news in markets, and then we'll be back on Monday. This episode was produced by Ariana Asparu. I'm your host, JR Whelan. Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors.

And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening.