By Roberto Alonso
Design Editor
10/16/18
Dominican has been steadily climbing the rankings and has now reached a new a record-high position U.S. News & World Report updated their ranking of schools around the country and Dominican is among the top contenders for “Best Value School” in the Midwest, and #1 “Best Value School” in Illinois. It also ranked #11 for “Best Regional Universities in the Midwest.”
“While Dominican has been among the top 20 of Midwest regional universities for more than two decades, This year’s achievement is the best in the university’s history.”
– Jessica Mackinnon
U.S. News & World Report ranks the Best Value Schools based on “academic quality” and net cost for students.
Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jeffrey Carlson says he’s proud of Dominicans recent recognition as it might attract the attention of future students, but also states that some of the elements used to rank schools are more important than others.
“Some of them are more of a popularity contest, in terms of whether people have heard of you or not.” he says. “One of them that is extraordinarily important is the difference between predicted and actual graduation rates.”
Carlson went on to say that Dominicans actual graduation rate has “an eight- point bump over the predicted.” U.S. News & World Report predicted Dominican would have an 8 percent lower graduation rate than it actually did.
According to Vice President for Enrollment Management and Marketing Genaro Balcazar, “It’s really about graduation and how we’re able to move students through our program and graduate. That’s really the big win in this, and for that reason, being able to communicate that to students is important.” According to Director of Public Relations and Advertising Jessica Mackinnon, Dominican jumped eight places to #11 from last year’s “Best Colleges” issue. “While Dominican has been among the top 20 of Midwest regional universities for more than two decades, this year’s achievement is the best in the university’s history” she wrote in a press release. According to Balcazar, “That’s not easy to do. There are schools that spend a lot of time and a lot of resources in trying to move one or two ranking spots. So to be able to do that is impressive.”
Last year, 99 percent of all Dominican students with financial need received some form of financial support through the university,” Mackinnon said. According to Carlson, “It’s not that we’re ranked #11, it’s why we’re ranked #11 that matters to me. It’s a moral accomplishment that we are having a significantly higher graduation rate than we are supposed to.” Carlson added that Dominican is a “countervailing narrative to society” by giving a study opportunity to lower income students while having a higher graduation rate than expected.
alonrobe@my.dom.edu
