Today@Sam Article
Sam Houston State Maintains Top Ranking In Social Mobility
Sept. 13, 2022
SHSU Media Contact: Emily Binetti
Sam Houston State University is yet again a top performer on social mobility and earned a spot on the Top Public Schools and National Universities list, according to U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings of 1,500 schools released Monday.
Named #23 in Social Mobility out of 439 colleges and universities, Sam Houston State climbed higher in the rankings from #24 last year. This is also the second year in a row that SHSU has held the top spot for social mobility in the State of Texas.
Since 2019, U.S. News has factored in a school’s success at promoting social mobility by measuring the success of students who received federal Pell Grants, among other factors. Students who receive federal Pell Grants typically come from households with annual family incomes less than $50,000.
“Our No. 1 ranking comes as no surprise to me with more than 50 percent of our graduates being the first in their family to earn a college degree,” President Alisa White said. “When families send their children to college, the goal is reaching upward mobility, each generation hoping the next will have it a little easier and will be able to achieve more. Nowhere is this more evident than at Sam Houston State.”
Sam Houston State is committed to facilitating social mobility through academic excellence. It has several initiatives in place to enhance opportunities for degree completion and remove barriers that have the potential to prevent students from earning degrees, including the Academic Success Center, the Student Money Management Center, the First-Year Experience program and the First-Generation Center, which opened this academic year to assist first-gen students and their families with the transition to college.
The university also earned recognition in other areas within the report, including Top Public Schools (tied for #132), Undergraduate Business Programs (tied for #326), Undergraduate Computer Science Programs (#308), Undergraduate Nursing Programs (tied for #293) and Ethnic Diversity (web-exclusive).
U.S. News notes that 40 percent of a school’s rank stems from seven different outcomes, measuring its success at enrolling, retaining and graduating students from diverse backgrounds with manageable debt. Five factors related to a school’s faculty, including class size and the number of instructional faculty compared with the number of students, account for 20 percent of a school’s rank.
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