Bentley Fifth in Nation in Economist College Ranking

The Economist said that many, including the universities themselves, don’t like some of the ranking methods used by national magazines, stating “among the well-founded criticisms of these popular league tables is that they do not measure how much universities help their students, but rather what type of students choose to attend each college.”

In its first-ever dip into college rankings, The Economist relied on a Sept. 12 college scorecard released by America’s Department of Education.

Three Massachusetts institutions - Babson College, Harvard University and Bentley University- made the top-20 list, with Bentley University landing at number 5. According to the findings, the expected earnings for a Bentley grad is $62,327, while the median earning is $74,900.

“The government generated the numbers by matching individuals’ student-loan applications to their subsequent tax returns, making it possible to compare pupils’ qualifications and demographic characteristics when they entered college with their salaries ten years later,” wrote the Economist. “That information offers the potential to disentangle student merit from university contributions, and thus to determine which colleges deliver the greatest return and why.”

In its rankings, The Economist took what a college graduate from each university was expected to make, and compared it to the median earned income that graduates earn.

Data is available on 1,275 institutions.

The upper tiers, The Economist reported, were dominated by engineering-focused institutions that attract those with high SAT scores, while those who ranked lower were religious and art-focused colleges.

View the list, and the detailed explanation of how the rankings were attained, here.