GREENVILLE, S.C.—Furman University has been named to Kiplinger’s “100 Best Values in Private Colleges,” with its ranking improving over last year’s.
The magazine ranked Furman 39th nationally among liberal arts colleges across the nation for 2010, an improvement over Furman’s previous ranking of 45th.
Furman and Wofford College (31st) were the only South Carolina schools to make the liberal arts list, and only three other liberal arts colleges in the South were included: Davidson College (4th), Washington & Lee University (7th) and Rhodes College (41st).
“Furman has long had a reputation for quality,” said president David Shi. “It's gratifying to be recognized additionally for our efforts to provide sufficient financial aid to make a Furman education affordable."
Kiplinger, the personal finance and business forecasting company, looks for institutions that offer “excellent academics while keeping their costs to a minimum.” The latest rankings appear in Kiplinger’s December issue, expected to hit newsstands Nov. 10.
The rankings already are available online at www.kiplinger.com/reports/best-college-values/ with tools to compare institutions in categories such as cost, average debt by graduates, admission rate, SAT/ACT scores, student-to-faculty ratio and graduation rate.
The magazine concludes that schools on the list appear to have navigated well in recent turbulent economic seas. Overall, independent colleges boosted financial aid by nine percent while keeping tuition increases (4.3 percent) to the lowest levels in four decades.
Thanks to financial aid packages, families are finding that a private college is still affordable despite the fact that the average cost of a year at a private school has increased to about $35,600.
“This year’s top 100 private colleges and universities met the challenges of a slumping economy with brio, delivering quality, generous financial aid and, in a few cases, sticker prices that are almost as low as out-of-state tuition at some public institutions,” the magazine notes.