Brown, PC ranked among best college values

WASHINGTON – Brown University is the nation’s 12th best value among private universities and Providence College is No. 31 in an annual ranking by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.
“Despite shrinking endowments, these schools deliver an affordable, high-quality education,” Kiplinger’s says in introducing its annual lists of the nation’s top 50 private universities and top 50 liberal arts colleges. A separate report, also in the current edition, lists the top 100 public colleges.
The annual reports – based in part on information from the Peterson’s Undergraduate Database – evaluate schools based on both “academic quality and affordability, with quality accounting for two-thirds of the total,” the magazine says. Factors weighed by Kiplinger’s include the percentage of applicants who are offered admission; the percent of freshmen achieving certain scores on the ACT or SAT; the student-faculty ratio; the five-year graduation rate; the total cost per student for the current academic year, including tuition, fees, room and board and estimated costs for books; the cost after need-based and non-need-based aid; the percent of aid awarded in grants, rather than loans; the percent of non-needy undergraduates who receive financial aid; and the average debt at graduation.
No. 1 this year among private universities is the California Institute of Technology, with an admission rate of 17 percent, a student-faculty ratio of 3 and an average debt at graduation of $6,268. By comparison, Brown has an admission rate of 14 percent, a student-faculty ratio of 9 and an average debt at graduation of $18,610, while PC admits 41 percent of applicants, has 12 students to every teacher and leaves students with an average debt at graduation of $35,216.
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, founded in 1947, is a monthly publication of The Kiplinger Washington Editors Inc. Additional information, including the full “2009 Best Values: Private Colleges & Universities” report, is available at www.kiplinger.com.