SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Wofford College is among Forbes magazine’s 300 “Best Value Colleges 2016” in an article published today (Tuesday, March 29, 2016). Wofford, ranked 134th, is the third-highest of the six South Carolina institutions on the list, after The Citadel at 50th and Clemson University at 124th.
Forbes compiled the “newly reimagined” ranking for its article, “Best Value Colleges 2016: The 300 Schools Worth the Investment,” based on tuition costs, school quality, graduation success rates and post-graduate earnings.
“With a college degree still a near universal aspiration in this country, Forbes looks at the U.S. colleges and universities that provide students with the most value for the dollar,” writes Caroline Howard, who covers education, enterprising women and special projects for the publication. “This is our newly reimagined Best Value Colleges ranking, an analysis of the brainiest research universities and leading liberal arts schools, both public and private, that are well worth the investment.”
“Forbes’ ranking of Wofford as a best value college reflects our long-term commitment to balancing two important priorities: offering an outstanding residential educational program and focusing on affordability for a wide range of students and families,” Wofford President Nayef Samhat says. “We consistently are ranked on such listings in various national college guides and publications. Earlier this year, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance also named Wofford as a best value, for instance.”
Forbes set out to answer one question, Howard writes, “What schools are worth the investment?”
To answer the question, the magazine partnered with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which gathered data from a variety of sources on five general categories: quality, drop-out risk, graduation success, post-graduate earnings, value-added (“an attempt to isolate the effect colleges themselves have on those outcomes [like salaries], above and beyond what students’ backgrounds would predict”), and gross tuition and fees.