4 NJ Colleges Among Best Values In America, Kiplinger Says

For students planning to enroll this year, a new list ranks the best value colleges in the country for 2018 and four of those colleges are in New Jersey, with one topping the list.

The list is compiled by Kiplinger, a personal finance and business forecasts publisher. Kiplinger notes that nationally, over the past 20 years, in-state students attending public four-year universities have gone up 82 percent when adjusted for inflation. Tuition hikes have been less dramatic at private, non-profit four-year colleges, but still jumped 59 percent.

Student-loan debt has also gone up while average earnings of recent college graduates have remained relatively flat, according to Kiplinger. The publication’s annual list of the 300 best value colleges and universities weighs quality with affordability, giving students a resource to see where they’ll get the most for their investment.

Kiplinger defines value as “a high-quality education at an affordable price.”

The four New Jersey institutions that are among 300 in the country that rank as “best value colleges” are:

• Princeton University (1) Average debt at graduation: $8,908
• College of New Jersey (108) Average debt at graduation: $35,798
• Rutgers University—New Brunswick (142) Average debt at graduation: $25,975
• Ramapo College of New Jersey (188) Average debt at graduation: $11,275

To come up with the rankings, Kiplinger looks at admission and graduation rates, academic support, tuition costs and financial aid, average student debt and the salary graduates might earn a decade after they graduate. (You can read more about Kiplinger’s methodology here.)

The top 10 colleges on the list are:

1. Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
2. Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina
3. Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
4. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusett
5. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
6. Pomona College, Claremont, California
7. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
8. Rice University, Houston, Texas
9. Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
10. Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts

You can see the full list here.

With reporting by Feroze Dhanoa and Kara Seymour

Photo credit: Shutterstock