The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education World University Rankings is an annual assessment of colleges and universities that puts student success and learning at its heart in an effort to measure institutions’ “educational impact”.

Their 2017 rankings of 1061 institutions worldwide place Oglethorpe University in the top 40%, and in the top 29% of U.S. colleges and universities.

According to WSJ/THE, the rankings aim to address the questions that matter most when choosing a college:

• Does the college have sufficient resources to teach me properly, and have a good academic reputation?
• Will I be engaged, and challenged, by my teacher and classmates?
• What type of campus community is there?
• How likely am I to graduate, pay off my loans and get a good job?

Drawn from 15 performance indicators, the rankings evaluate: resources (finance and faculty per student; papers per faculty); engagement (student engagement, interaction and recommendation; subject breadth); outcomes (graduation rate, graduate salary, loan repayment and reputation); and environment (international population, student and faculty diversity, and inclusion). Data sources include the Times Higher Education (THE) U.S. Student Survey of 100,000 current U.S. students, and the annual THE Academic Reputation Survey of 10,000 scholars in 133 countries, along with public data on areas including completion rates, graduate employment and loan repayments.

“Our aim is to assess each university’s success in achieving their educational mission, rather than focusing on a narrow set of inputs,” said Phil Baty, Times Higher Education Rankings editor. “Following a year of conversation with American higher education stakeholders, we shared the Wall Street Journal’s vision for a different type of U.S. ranking system—one that does not fall into the trap of simply measuring university selectivity and wealth, but puts at its heart a university’s ability to deliver valuable outcomes and education for its students.”