OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi has cracked the Top 25 again, this time as one of America’s Best College Buys.
The list is part of the annual America’s Best Colleges section of Forbes, which includes several rankings and data on hundreds of colleges and universities. Ole Miss entered the list of Best College Buys at No. 24, sandwiched between the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry at No. 23, and the University of California at Berkeley at No. 25. The top three on the list include the United States Military Academy, Air Force Academy and Naval Academy, all of which have zero tuition.
“It is gratifying to see this type of external validation for the quality and value of our educational programs,” said UM Chancellor Dan Jones. “It is easy to understand why more and more students are choosing to experience amazing at Ole Miss.”
The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, in conjunction with Forbes, compiled the list using five general categories: student satisfaction, postgraduate success, student debt, four-year graduation rate and competitive awards. The rankings are aimed to assist families in their choice of colleges in regard to getting the most quality for each tuition dollar spent.
Tuition and fees at America’s four-year institutions have exploded over the last two decades, growing 91 percent beyond the rate of inflation, according to Forbes.
Ole Miss has several programs to help ease the costs of higher education for families. For example, the university annually awards hundreds of Luckyday Scholarships, ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 a year.
Luckyday scholar Courtney Randall, a senior sociology major from Jackson, said she would have been unable to attend Ole Miss without the scholarship.
“It’s been a blessing,” said Randall, who aspires to work as a field agent with Homeland Security. “The Luckyday Scholarship paid for all of my tuition and most of my books.”
Another program is the Ole Miss Opportunity Scholarship program for low-income Mississippi students. Launched this year, Ole Miss Opportunity guarantees financial aid support for tuition, housing and meals. More than 100 students are enrolled this fall under the program.
The Forbes honor is the latest in a series of accolades for Ole Miss in recent months.
In December, a survey by StateUniversity.com ranked UM as the safest campus in the Southeastern Conference. This summer, The Chronicle of Higher Education picked UM for the second consecutive year as one of the top 10 Great Colleges To Work For among colleges with more than 10,000 students. Finally, in their new book “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – and What We Can Do About It,” authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus wrote that of all the flagship institutions they visited, they found Ole Miss “the most appealing.”
For more information on the Forbes report, go to http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/