Radford University has been ranked as one of Money Magazine’s Best Colleges in America 2022, coming in at No. 296 out of the 2,400 colleges and universities evaluated nationwide.
In addition, Radford was ranked No. 50 on the Best Colleges in the South listing by the publication.
According to Money, to make their initial cut, a college had to have at least 500 undergraduate students; have sufficient, reliable data to be analyzed; not be in financial distress; have a graduation rate that was at or above the median for its institutional category (public, private or historically black college or university); or have a high “value-added” graduation rate (in other words: score in the top 25% of graduation rates after accounting for the student body).
A total of 671 schools met these requirements. The team then scored each institution on 24 measures in three areas: quality, affordability and outcomes. The quality measures focused on graduation rates; affordability looked at the net price of a degree, student and parent borrowing and loan repayment rates; and outcomes evaluated the median earnings, the share of alumni working, and the share of alumni earning more than a high school graduate.
The analysis also included four “value-added” calculations that compared a school’s performance against its predicted performance after accounting for the standardized test scores and percentage of low-income students among its enrollees.
Mark Lambert
Radford University
