W&M among most efficient universities in the nation
William & Mary operates more efficiently than any other national university in Virginia, according to an analysis released by U.S. News & World Report Thursday.
The magazine looked at the highest-ranked public and private schools in its 2015 Best Colleges guide, released in September 2014, and examined which produced the highest-quality educational programs at the lowest cost.
William & Mary is the top-ranked school in Virginia and fifth nationwide on the resulting list of efficiently operating national universities. William & Mary also has the highest overall U.S. News ranking for undergraduate academic quality of any university to make the top 20 for efficiency.
“Schools that are featured on these lists are doing a good job in managing their financial resources relative to other schools that may have far greater financial resources because of more state funding, higher tuition or larger endowments,” a U.S. News article says.
In order to determine which schools do the most with the fewest resources, U.S. News divided each university’s overall financial resources rank by its overall score, as listed in the magazine’s 2015 guide.
William & Mary, which was ranked 33rd among national schools, had an overall score of 67 in that report and a financial resources rank of 110. According to the U.S. News efficiency analysis, that means William & Mary spent $441.82 per student for each point in its overall score. Virginia Tech, the only other Virginia institution on the list of efficient, national schools, spent $565.67 per student for each point of its overall score of 52.
William & Mary had a greater gap between overall score and financial resources rank than any of the top 50 national universities. None of the four schools listed as more efficient than William & Mary were among the top-50 national universities; their rankings fall between 76 and 95 in the U.S. News guide.
Only schools that were ranked in the top-half of their respective ranking categories were included in the efficiency analysis.
According to U.S. News, schools, like William & Mary, that are categorized as “national universities” offer a full range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral programs. They also seek to produce groundbreaking research.
