LOUISIANA TECH COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
U.S. News & World Report, known for its overall rankings of America’s best colleges and universities as well as their law schools, has a new ranking and one state school, Louisiana Tech, made the top 10, the only Louisiana higher education institution to do so.
But with yet another round of deep (as in $350 million) budget cuts anticipated for higher education, any rankings of Louisiana colleges and universities will likely remain in a constant state of flux.
The ranking of the 50 Most Underrated Colleges in America places Louisiana Tech as number 8 in the country and number 1 in Louisiana (obviously, since we’ve already established that no other school in the state made the list).
The USN&WR study includes only two Southeastern Conference schools, the University of Arkansas (no. 40) and Auburn (tied for no. 41) in the top 50 most underrated schools.
The report took into consideration two factors: reputation and future earnings on the premise that the students of schools otherwise flying under the rankings radar made high salaries would be underrated.
By combining the two factors, 316 universities and liberal arts colleges appeared in both the USN&WR and PayScale rankings.
Louisiana Tech was ranked as the 201st best overall school and 234th in mid-career salary at $83,000 (Someone was really raking it in to pull my average up), ranking Tech among the top 25 in the U.S. for the best return on investments in college education.
By comparison, the University of Arkansas ranked 135th overall and 222nd in pay scale rank ($83,600) and among the top 50 in public research universities while Auburn ranked 103rd overall and 151st in PayScale rank ($87,900).
Obviously, other statistical data factored into the underrated rankings, such as tuition costs, etc.
There was one other school that made the top 50 underrated schools, one which LSU baseball fans should remember with some trepidation.
Stony Brook University, a space grant university in New York eliminated a heavily-favored LSU team in the LSU Super Regional in a best of three series in 2012 to advance to the College World Series. Stony Brook, which also ranked as one of the top 40 universities overall by USN&WR, was the 34th most underrated school with its graduates earning an average mid-career salary of $94,300.
Louisiana Voice 
Sad to see an institution from which both you and I have degrees in danger of losing ground on the heels of such an honor. I don’t think either of us got rich, but we got a good education. Another of my alma maters, Northwestern (an excellent liberal arts college at the time) is apparently in danger of closing outright and our flagship university is sinking fast. What a state we are.
Legislators: DO NOT STAND BY AND LET HIGHER EDUCATION BE SET BACK A GENERATION!
That’s what we are looking at here. IT IS NOT UP TO THE GOVERNOR; IT IS UP TO YOU!
Step up for a change. Commit to RESTORING funds to higher ed; NOT taking more from them and setting them back for another twenty years.
All of you out there that feel this way – send this to your representative and senator – call your representative and senator – vote them out if they continue to duck, cringe, whine and significantly harm higher ed through their ineptness and cowardice.