Truman Among the Nation’s 50 Best Colleges

Truman State University comes in at No. 49 on a recently released report of the best four-year public institutions across the country, based on 20 indicators of academic excellence.

The rankings, released by Business First, give the highest marks to schools with highly selective admissions processes, strong retention and graduation rates, prestigious reputations, generous resources, affordable tuitions and housing costs, diverse faculties and student bodies, and economically robust communities.

Data for the report comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. College rankings recently issued by Forbes, Kiplinger’s and U.S. News and World Report also were taken into account.

Truman and the University of Missouri were the only schools from the state to make the top 100. Truman has been included in the top 50 both years this report has been released.

Business First is a publication of American City Business Journals Inc., the nation’s largest publisher of local business news and information.

In the featuring article announcing the rankings, Business First noted that 69 percent of U.S. students who graduated from college in 2014 went into debt as they pursued their bachelor’s degrees, according to a report by the Institute for College Access and Success. By comparison, typically half of all Truman students graduate without any student debt, and the other half graduate with debt well below the national and state averages.