Saint Anselm College stands out in overall National Liberal Arts Colleges, Best Value Schools, Nursing and Social Mobility categories. Saint Anselm’s placement on the U.S. News and World Report of college rankings shows its growth and excellence as a school yet outlines a growing problem seen for the Nation’s college ranking system.
This year, Saint Anselm ranked 89th out of 211 contenders for National Liberal Arts Colleges. According to the U.S. News and World Report, Saint Anselm College has steadily increased quality and improvements. In 2016, Saint Anselm ranked 112th, and 130th in 2013, a decade later. In an interview, Dr. Favazza responded, “I feel good about the ranking.”
Saint Anselm College, according to the report, was a top performer in the category of Social Mobility. The U.S. News and World Report defines this category as “Economically disadvantaged students are less likely than others to finish college, even when controlling [sic]for their achievement in high school.” Saint Anselm is a college that succeeds in preventing this from happening. Saint Anselm ranked one hundred and forty-five, a top performer in the ranking.
Dr. Favazza, addressing Saint Anselm’s Social Mobility, “Not only do we do a great job with graduating our students, but then those students…really do well in terms of not only finding careers that match their skill set and the things they’re interested in but also financially they do really well…an indicator of social mobility”
In the category of Best Value Schools, the U.S. News and World Report accounts for the cost of attendance, overall academic quality, and financial aid. Saint Anselm ranked number seventy-six in Best Value Schools.
In response to these rankings, President Favazza said, “That’s something I worry about: how can we make our Saint Anselm more accessible, more affordable…what we charge is certainly a more affordable option than a lot of other places… it’s great that we’re on that list this year…for the first time.” The only major mentioned by the U.S. News and World Report Nursing Program. The U.S. News and World Report gave Saint Anselm a 133 out of 656 in Nursing, which is in the twentieth percentile. According to the U.S. News and World Report, “rankings are determined by the average of scores received from surveys of top academics and officials at nursing schools or departments.”
Director of the Undergraduate Nursing Program, Dr. O’Reilly explains, “Our students have a great nursing curriculum with the addition of the liberal arts, the benedictine values. It’s about the whole patient, the whole family. They just have a different outlook.” Dean Uzarski, of Nursing and Health Sciences, says “We have excellent and experienced faculty who have been here for many years. They’re really deeply invested in the school and our students and they take students from the classroom and to the clinical setting and really care about the student’s success.”
It must be discussed how organizations such as U.S. News and College Factual, a competitor, get their data. Both of these organizations are multifaceted digital media companies that help consumers with information on important decisions in their lives. They use national data and technology to publish independent reporting and rankings of educational institutions.
The U.S. News and World Report estimated Saint Anselm’s graduation rate to be eighty-two percent this year. Considering the U.S. News and World Report’s data, Dr. Favazza answered, “They look at your retention rate and they predict what they think you’re graduation rates are going to be. If you do better than the prediction, that gives you more points…we did much better than their prediction and so that’s one of the reasons that we moved up pretty dramatically.”
When searching online at the 2023 College Factual data, the organization states, “The bachelor’s program at St. Anselm College was ranked #534 on College Factual’s Best Schools for Nursing list. It is also ranked #3 in New Hampshire.” Yet the site of this answer claims, “The bachelor’s program at St. Anselm College was ranked #723 on College Factual’s Best Schools for Nursing list. It is also ranked #4 in New Hampshire.” College Factual claims to be completely unbiased and backed by a college analytics team. This link then provides the reader with data from 2024. Yes, 2024. As Dr. Favazza said, these data organizations are making “predictions” on rankings. The data provided by College Factual on Saint Anselm’s site reads, “Ranked #4 in the U.S. for nursing by College Factual’s 2022 list of best colleges for nursing (4 out of 43).”
With her thoughts on the nursing ranking system, Dr. O’Reilly discusses, “You look at some of these surveys…some of their criteria has many different programs with nursing…some institutes have 12 programs, we have one…It’s kind of hard to really judge based on some of those things.”
No ranking, statistic, or number-based data will take-away Saint Anselm’s values. Ranking only covers the surface value of a College. Regardless of placement, Saint Anselm has shown growth and continues to be shared by the community. Favazza states, “We want students to… get a really excellent education…really pursue their major, their interests…not only do well
in life but also live well in life and be a productive citizen… also be happy with what they’re doing.” These goals from Dr. Favazza and Saint Anselm do not include statistics.