Yes, you’re reading this correctly: Harvard University is at No. 15 on this year’s Forbes list of America’s Top Colleges.
In a stunning dismissal of prestige and legacy in favor of retention and the power of Pell, Forbes delivered a heavy blow to one of the most highly respected institutions in the country, one that was No. 1 as recently as 2019. But with a changing methodology that now favors value and access for all, Harvard and many other traditional universities that once dominated the top have fallen in 2022. Their value is still great, but not compared with others, including No. 1 neighbor Massachusetts Institute of Technology and No. 2s Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
“Harvard doesn’t stack up to Forbes’ list leaders on a couple of measures. The first is retention rate,” wrote Emma Whitford, Forbes’ senior education reporter, in a separate article on the topic of why Harvard isn’t near the top, referencing its failures to bring back students during COVID-19 in 2020 at just 76%. “On top of pandemic-worn retention rates, Harvard scored poorly on Forbes’ Pell index [factoring the number of Pell students and their 6-year graduation rates].”
Whether Harvard will rise again next year, particularly after the return of international students, is uncertain. It still remains one of the best in terms of mid-career earnings ($169,000) and is more than generous in its aid packages for students, Forbes points out. However, the Pell problem likely won’t disappear for the Cambridge, Mass., institution because it simply doesn’t accept enough grant recipients from its applicant pool. It is one of the reasons why it sits at No. 15 and its Ivy League rivals Princeton (No. 4) and Yale (No. 8), which do have a wider swath of Pell holders on campus, managed to crack the Top 10. Even for Yale, the news wasn’t that great. It also tanked on retention and dropped from its No. 2 perch last year.
Another California institution, UCLA (No. 5), soared up the list while leading a wave of public institutions that gained strength under the Forbes methodology and in the eyes of students because of their affordability and low debt burdens. However, privates still managed to score 17 of the top 20 positions (the only other outlier being the University of California, San Diego, at No. 17). Williams College (No. 7) and Duke University (No. 9) managed to sneak into the Top 10, along with the University of Pennsylvania (No. 10). There were few surprises among the rest of that 20–except maybe their positions–Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Dartmouth all came in ahead of Harvard, while Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Brown and the University of Chicago slid below.
More rankings stories from UB
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- The top 5 rankings in key categories from The Princeton Review
Where publics really showed their strength is in the next tier, led by the University of California at Davis (No. 23), University of Michigan (No. 25), University of Florida (No. 26), University of North Carolina (No. 28), University of Virginia (No. 29), and University of California at Irvine (No. 30) all reaching the top 30.
“I am delighted that UCI is deservedly recognized as one of the finest public universities in the nation and am especially proud that our institution continues to provide world-class opportunities to those who traditionally have not had access to higher education,” said Chancellor Howard Gillman.
Many small, highly acclaimed liberal arts institutions, including Claremont McKenna, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Hamilton and Barnard, all fell outside the top 40.
But the best of them all was MIT. Aside from its stellar retention scores, its graduates manage the best median 10-year salary average at $173,700 (just ahead of Stanford’s $173,500) and have access to unparalleled academics in emerging fields and research, with Forbes noting its “439 patents and 25 companies formed.” MIT also recently landed at No. 1 on Niche’s 2023 Best Colleges in America and was No. 3 on Washington Monthly’s list, behind Stanford and Penn. For the record, Harvard finished No. 3 on Niche and No. 6 on Washington Monthly.
Another traditional power that landed in the top five was Princeton, which is one of the best in the nation at limiting loan debt for students at just $3,647. Berea College in Kentucky, which ranked No. 441 overall, led that category at $2,391. In terms of average grant aid, the best was Yale at $59,134, followed by Amherst College ($57,918) and Harvard.
Readers can check out more in the lists from Forbes. Here is its top 100 for 2022:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stanford University
- University of California-Berkeley
- Princeton University
- Columbia University
- UCLA
- Williams College
- Yale University
- Duke University
- University of Pennsylvania
- Northwestern University
- Rice University
- Vanderbilt University
- Dartmouth College
- Harvard University
- Cornell University
- University of California-Davis
- Johns Hopkins University
- Brown University
- University of Chicago
- University of Southern California
- Georgetown University
- University of California-Davis
- Amherst College
- University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- University of Florida
- Washington University in ST. Louis
- University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- University of Virginia
- University of California-Irvine
- Emory University
- Tufts University
- University of Washington at Seattle
- University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- University of Notre Dame
- Wellesley College
- Swarthmore College
- University of California-Santa Barbara
- University of Maryland, College Park
- College of William and Mary
- Boston College
- University of Texas at Austin
- Colgate University
- California Institute of Technology
- Carnegie-Mellon University
- Claremont McKenna College
- Bowdoin College
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Wake Forest University
- Wesleyan University
- Texas A&M University, College Station
- Hamilton College
- Boston University
- Middlebury College
- Santa Clara University
- Brigham Young University
- Purdue University
- Washington and Lee University
- New York University
- George Washington University
- Trinity College
- San Diego State University
- University of Georgia
- SUNY-Binghamton
- CUNY-Baruch College
- Florida State University
- University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
- Davidson College
- North Carolina State University
- Barnard College
- University of Richmond
- Vassar College
- University of Connecticut
- New Jersey Institute of Technology
- California State University-Fullerton
- Lafayette College
- University of Miami
- Northeastern University
- California State University-Long Beach
- Michigan State University
- Virginia Tech
- Southern Methodist University
- University of California-Riverside
- Pomona College
- SUNY-Stony Brook
- University of California-Santa Cruz
- University of Utah
- Bucknell University
- University at Buffalo
- Indiana University, Bloomington
- Grinnell College
- Rutgers University
- Villanova University
- Bryn Mawr College
- Colorado College
- University of Rochester
- Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo
- University of Illinois-Chicago
- Loyola Marymount University