These New Jersey colleges see boosts in 2024 U.S. News rankings

Many of New Jersey’s higher education institutions saw boosts in the latest U.S. News & World Report college and university rankings, now calculated using a new approach that dropped some old measures and added new ones emphasizing student opportunity and return on investment.

Princeton University continued a trend and topped the national universities list, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in second and third place.

The 2024 rankings' focus on accessibility and student matriculation was especially advantageous to schools that also ease the financial burdens of attending them while successfully graduating students from the lowest-income brackets within six years. The assessment focused less on academic quality measures and more on output and results, by dropping factors like faculty expertise and class size from its metrics, the U.S. News website said.

The report has faced wide criticism in recent years for the outsized importance attached to college rankings, but the changed approach propelled many schools in the state to higher spots.

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Princeton’s administrators are generally lukewarm about the rankings despite topping the list; in 2021, university President Christopher Eisgruber called the "rankings game" a "wacky obsession."

“Whatever rankings show from year to year, Princeton remains committed to contributing to the world through research and teaching of unsurpassed quality,” spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss said in response to the 2024 numbers. “What has changed this year is that more Princeton undergraduates are receiving more financial aid ... About a quarter of undergraduates now pay nothing to attend Princeton, and 66% of newly enrolled students receive aid — including many from families with incomes up to and even beyond $300,000.”

Other New Jersey schools have welcomed the news of rising in the rankings.

Rutgers University-New Brunswick climbed to 15 among top public universities, its highest ranking ever in that category. Also for the first time, the state’s flagship university ranked 40th among all national universities, public and private, moving up 15 places in the rankings from 55th last year, the university said. It tied at 40 with Tufts University in Boston and Washington University in Seattle. Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway called the news "exciting."

Rutgers’ Newark and Camden campuses also made the top 50 public universities list for the first time. Rutgers-Newark was at 40, up from 53 last year, and Rutgers-Camden was at 49, up from 61 last year, the university said. Each also moved up by around 30 spots in the national university list, to 82 and 98, compared with last year, the university said.

Also up in the top 100 national university list is Stevens Institute of Technology, ranked at 76, above Rutgers-Newark and Rutgers-Camden. Started in 1870, Hoboken’s Stevens Institute is a small private school offering STEM and liberal arts degrees. New Jersey Institute of Technology followed, at 86.

Seton Hall in South Orange and Stockton University in Galloway, were at 151 and 159. Montclair State and Rowan tied at 163, with Montclair moving up 19 spots. Kean University was at 320, the only New Jersey institution to fall below the top 200 spots in the national university rankings.

Several other criteria make for separate rankings lists, such as rating colleges according to “social mobility" — which measures low-income enrollment and graduation numbers. Among other lists are best schools for veterans, best undergraduate schools, most innovative schools and top public schools.

Montclair State was seventh in the nation and first in New Jersey in social mobility out of 435 universities, the university said.

Montclair State President Jonathan Koppell welcomed the U.S. News report’s emphasis on first-generation and Pell-eligible students’ success in its new methodology.

“If an institution rejects 97% of applicants, probably the admitted 3% are going to do pretty well, because the school only took the very best people. What the U.S. News report tried to do in this year’s ranking is emphasize the difference that going to the college makes, not just the starting point. That was probably the biggest shift from previous years … institutions like Montclair, that are trying to do a lot for accessibility, are going to do very differently on this scale,” he told NorthJersey.com.

Other highly rated national schools outside New Jersey criticized the changes in rating metrics. Tennessee's Vanderbilt University, after dropping to 18 on the 2024 national university rankings, issued a public letter restating its commitment to access and affordability. “These changes constitute an attack on the very notion of academic excellence. If a ranking scheme ostensibly concerned with academic quality is reducing its academic quality criteria, what, exactly, is it measuring?” Chancellor Daniel Diermeier wrote.

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Regional universities

Woodland Park’s Berkeley College tied for spots 152-167 on the best regional universities–north list. The regional universities on the rankings are divided by geographic area and grouped for their focus on undergraduate education in liberal arts and other disciplines. Berkeley also rose from 86 to 79 on the best regional universities-north list for social mobility. In New Jersey, 15 institutions were acknowledged in the regional-north category, and 14 institutions were acknowledged in the category for social mobility, Berkeley College said.

Fairleigh Dickinson University, with campuses in Teaneck and Madison, climbed 18 spots. It tied with St. Peter’s University in Jersey City at 45 among regional universities in the north. It also ranked 14th in best value schools and 13th on social mobility.

The College of New Jersey in Ewing ranked fourth in regional colleges in the north. Monmouth University followed at 17, Ramapo College of New Jersey at 27 and Rider University at 33. William Paterson University in Wayne ranked 69th, Caldwell University was at 80, and St. Elizabeth’s was at 96.

St. Elizabeth’s, in Morristown, made the top 100 regional universities for the first time, climbing five spots. Drew University in Madison went up 17 spots to 93 in the 100 top liberal arts schools in the country.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: New Jersey colleges see boosts in 2024 U.S. News rankings