• Baylor receives high marks in new rankings from multiple sources

    Students studyingBaylor is well-established as one of the best values in higher education, having been repeatedly named a “best buy” and “best value” by the Fiske Guide and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. Why? There are plenty of reasons, from the challenging courses to the caring community that stems from Baylor’s Christian commitment, but one reason highlighted this week was the university’s dedication to providing a well-rounded, competitive education.

    Baylor was one of only 16 universities nationwide to receive an “A” from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in a new report that gauges an institution’s commitment to general education: composition, literature, foreign language at the intermediate level, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or physical science.

    U.S. News & World Report also released its 2010 evaluations of American universities; Baylor ranks third in the Big 12 and fifth in the state of Texas in this year’s study.  At No. 79 in the nation (out of the 262 schools ranked), the Bears are easily in the top tier, tied with American University in Washington, D.C., Michigan State and the University of Alabama. Others in the same neighborhood include UConn, Virginia Tech, Auburn and BYU.

    In the Big 12, the Bears ranked ahead of every school but Texas (45) and Texas A&M (63). Within the state, Baylor ranks fifth, behind those two plus Rice (17) and SMU (56). TCU (99), UT-Dallas (143) and Texas Tech (159) round out the state’s tier-one national universities, as categorized by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

    Two of the individual programs ranked this year remained in the nation’s top 20. (U.S.News does not rank every program every year.) Baylor’s undergraduate engineering program moved up to No. 11 among schools which only offer bachelor’s or master’s degrees in the field, while the entrepreneurship program ranked 15th. The Hankamer School of Business held tight as the No. 57 undergraduate business program in the country.

    Sic ’em, dear old Baylor U!