William Paterson University has jumped to number 26 in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of top performers on social mobility among northern regional universities, demonstrating the institution’s important impact on students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The rankings are included in U.S. News’s newly released 2022 edition of Best Colleges.
The University moved up 12 spots from no. 38 in the 2021 edition, and from no. 65 in the 2020 report. The ranking, among 171 regional universities in the northern United States, measures how well schools graduate students with exceptional financial need.
In addition, William Paterson tied for no. 6 of the same 171 regional universities in the Best Colleges category of “campus ethnic diversity,” which identifies colleges where “students are most likely to encounter undergraduates from racial or ethnic groups different from their own.”
“These latest rankings validate what our graduates already know about the life-changing power of a William Paterson degree,” says President Richard J. Helldobler. “Many institutions of higher education focus on rankings that are tied to who they exclude. At William Paterson, we are proud of who we welcome into our University community. Our diverse population of students—many of them first generation—are the people who are changing the social fabric of our region and our state, and our graduates are using their William Paterson degrees to improve their lives and strengthen their communities.”
William Paterson University is among the national leaders in helping its students climb the socioeconomic ladder. It ranks in the top 5 percent of 1,449 institutions in the country in the 2020 Social Mobility Index, created by CollegeNet to measure the extent to which a college or university educates more economically disadvantaged students at lower tuition and graduates them into good-paying jobs.
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William Paterson University
300 Pompton Road
Wayne, New Jersey 07470
973-720-2000
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