LSU is rated the 264th best school among nearly 800 U.S. public and private universities in this year’s Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings released today, up from 295th last year.
Overall, LSU ranks in the top quarter of all public universities, at No. 71, up from No. 84 in last year’s rankings.
Within the Southeastern Conference, LSU ranks 5th among its 13 public institutions, behind the University of Florida (56), Texas A&M’s main campus at College Station (83), the University of Georgia (149) and Auburn University (243).
Statewide, LSU lags only Tulane, which holds the No. 68 spot. However, LSU is by far Louisiana’s highest-ranked public university on the list, with the rest—including the UL-Lafayette, Louisiana Tech, UNO, Southeastern, and Southern University—falling below the 600-mark.
The rankings are based on 15 factors across four main categories. Forty percent of each school’s overall score comes from student outcomes, including graduates’ salaries and debt; 30% comes from academic resources, including how much the college spends on teaching; 20% from student engagement, including whether students feel prepared to use their education in the real world; and 10% from the learning environment, including the diversity of the student body and academic staff.
Compared to most other U.S. colleges, LSU fared favorably in student outcomes and engagement, ranking No. 162 and No. 337, respectively. However, LSU placed in the bottom half of colleges (>400) in terms of academic resources and learning environment. Overall, Louisiana’s flagship university scored 54.9 out of a possible 100.
Data was collected before the near-total shutdown of in-person higher education, and rankings don’t weigh increasingly important considerations like quality of distance learning or in-person health and safety practices.
Check out the full list, and read the analysis of this year’s WSJ/THE College Rankings.
