UNC-Chapel Hill ranks as the No. 1 value in American public higher education, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine reported today.
For the 11th time in a row, UNC-CH ranked first on Kiplinger’s list of the 100 universities and colleges that provide the best value to in-state students. The magazine also listed Carolina No. 1 for the value offered to out-of-state students.
The new ranking appears in the February issue posted along with a related story this morning.
The personal finance magazine Kiplinger's has released its 2009 list of the top cities in the U.S., and Raleigh is ranked 10th. While most cities would likely be happy with a top ten finish, Raleigh ranked second on Kiplinger's 2008 list and has been the Tiger Woods of municipalities when it comes to these sorts of rankings in recent years. (Raleigh's abundance of accolades has been mentioned as a reason why City Manager Russell Allen was recently given a 5 percent raise.)
Why the drop in the Kiplinger's list? It likely has something to do with the Raleigh area's unemployment rate, which has doubled over the last year to 8.6 percent, as Kipplinger's notes.
If there is a connection among many of the cities ranked in the top ten it is that most are state capitals or university towns, meaning they are places with a large number of relatively stable public-sector jobs. The top ten cities, from one to nine, are: Huntsville, Albuquerque, Washington D.C. , Charlottesville, Athens, Olympia, Madison, Austin and Flagstaff. (Huntsville doesn't have a major university and is not the capital, but it is a major center for the missile-defense and aerospace industries.)
The question for Raleigh and the politicians who love citing the city's rankings is whether Kiplinger's is a sign of things to come or an aberation. These things tend to go in cycles, and it could be that the list-makers are looking for some new city to anoint.
Four of North Carolina's private universities are considered top values, according to a new magazine analysis.
Kiplinger's Personal Finance likes Duke, Davidson, Elon and Wake Forest.
Read more about it here.
File this under "no kidding."
UNC Chapel Hill has once again been named the "best value in public higher education" by Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. No, the magazine isn't on the university payroll, but it has given Carolina top honors each year since it started the ranking in 1998.
The ranking will be part of the magazine's Nov. 11 issue.
N.C. State ranks 18th on the list; UNC Wilmington checks in at 25 and Appalachian State is 29.
The top five are UNC, Florida, Virginia, Georgia and the College of William and Mary.
The Kiplinger ranking evaluates 100 public universities on a mix of affordability and academic quality.
Apparently, all this construction dust the folks in Chapel Hill have been inhaling for about seven years now have caught the eye of this magazine's evaluators. Of UNC, the magazine fawns thusly:
"UNC students of every background have equal reason to be thrilled at the opportunity to share classrooms with other high-achieving students and learn from a nationally acclaimed faculty. The historic campus is undergoing a major refurbishing that includes the FedEx Global Education Center, a hub for international studies, as well as a state-of-the-art physical sciences complex."
