University Rankings: Montclair is No. 7 in the Nation for Social Mobility

The college rankings are out and there’s good news!  I’m not even talking about the well-deserved recognition of Montclair State University… but you can be sure I’m gonna get to that!

It is good for everyone that outlets like The Wall Street Journal and U.S. News & World Report are pivoting their focus to metrics that really matter to prospective students. They’re sifting through data more critically than ever to assess how institutions change the lives of students and their families; evaluating who offers affordability without compromising quality.

It’s through this lens that Montclair performed exceptionally well in this year’s rankings. We are proud to be ranked by US News & World Report as No. 7 in the nation and No. 1 in New Jersey in social mobility, a measure of how well schools enroll and graduate low-income and first-generation students and bring them closer to achieving the American Dream.

Montclair was also ranked No. 11 in the nation for graduation rate performance, which measures how well students out-perform the anticipated graduation rate of those with similar backgrounds at other schools.

This follows on the heels of The Wall Street Journal’s rankings of the nation’s best colleges, which recognized Montclair as:

• No. 4 in New Jersey (ahead of Rutgers University and Seton Hall University)
• No. 104 overall out of 400 institutions (ahead of New York University, Boston University, and Northeastern University)
• No. 37 out of 204 public institutions (ahead of The University of Texas at Austin, Penn State, and the University of Maryland)

These new rankings demonstrate that a school can be accessible, affordable, rigorous and excellent. We are not just providing an exceptional value at Montclair, we are providing a truly excellent educational experience. Even more importantly, Montclair is tackling head-on the most common critique of higher education: that students take on unmanageable debt to get degrees that don’t help them, if they get a degree at all.

I couldn’t be prouder of our faculty, staff, and students for achieving this recognition!