According to new rankings by The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education, Elmhurst College placed among the top 15 colleges and universities in Illinois, and in the top third among more than 1,000 four-year, higher education institutions assessed nationally.
The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education’s U.S. College Rankings 2017 focus on student engagement, learning and success, and tout the fact that their findings are drawn in part from an annual survey of 100,000 current U.S. college students.
Released earlier this month, the rankings are based on 14 performance indicators “designed to answer the questions that matter the most to students and their families,” including:
- Does the college have sufficient resources to teach me properly?
- Will I be engaged and challenged by my teachers and classmates?
- What type of campus community is there?
- How likely am I to graduate, pay off my loans and get a good job?
The performance indicators are grouped into four “pillars”—resources, engagement, outcomes and environment—and include specific data on institutional spending per student, student-faculty ratios and opportunities to interact, academic and co-curricular opportunities, academic reputation, graduation rates, post-graduation earnings and other factors. The rankings incorporate results from the Times Higher Education U.S. Student Survey, which asks students about a range of topics, including engagement with their studies and satisfaction with their college experience.
Elmhurst College came in at No. 15 among 42 Illinois colleges and universities that made the list, and at No. 340 among the 1,061 across the country that were ranked. The complete rankings are available here.