AcademicInfluence.com has ranked Oglethorpe University at #47 on its list of the nation’s Best Colleges and Universities by Academic Stewardship.

Taking a cue from Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “The Myth of Meritocracy,” Academic Influence has created new rankings to recognize schools for making the most effective use of both their financial and human resources to “do more with less.” Specifically, schools on their list “are doing everything in their power to help students and faculty achieve their full potential.”

Mike Nietzel of Forbes described the new ranking approach as a way to highlight the achievements and quality of education that smaller schools provide. “Academic Stewardship recognizes colleges not for their influence per se but for their effectiveness in producing influence with limited means,” he writes.

To measure a school’s financial stewardship, Academic Influence considers undergraduate size, budget, endowments and reserves, as well as tuition and fees, using data available from the National Center for Educational Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

In addition, they factor in a school’s financial responsibility as gauged by the Federal Student Aid Office at the U.S. Department of Education through its financial responsibility composite scores. A school’s stewardship of human resources is determined using publicly available databases to measure a school’s influence based on the contributions faculty and alumni make in their fields of study. Schools that rank highly, given their available human resources, invest heavily in their students and faculty.

“This metric spotlights smaller schools, with fewer financial resources and people, that invest wisely and do proportionately better in building influence than large wealthy schools,” Academic Influence explains. “Many of these smaller, less wealthy schools are incentivized to make better use of their resources.”