UTEP is top ranked in Texas for social mobility, based on college rankings released this week by the Wall Street Journal.
Newswise — EL PASO, Texas (Sept. 7, 2023) – The University of Texas at El Paso is top ranked in Texas for social mobility, based on college rankings released this week by the Wall Street Journal. The journal ranks colleges by how much they help lower-income students secure high-paying jobs while minimizing the cost of attendance.
“We usually don’t pay much attention to college rankings because they focus on selectivity. It’s the wrong measure. We want to be measured by who we include, not who we exclude,” said UTEP President Heather Wilson. “However, this new Wall Street Journal ranking measures colleges based on real impact on student’s lives. We are pleased that UTEP’s success in creating upward mobility for our students has been recognized on the national stage.”
According to the WSJ, the social mobility ranking “lists colleges in order of how much they enhance their students’ social mobility. It rewards universities that take in the highest proportion of students coming from lower-income families, while maintaining high graduation rates and having a positive impact on graduate salaries and minimizing the costs of attending the college.”
The full WSJ rankings list and methodology can be found online here: https://www.wsj.com/rankings/college-rankings/social-mobility-2024
UTEP’s national ranking on the Social Mobility Index was 20th, with a score of 91.6 out of 100 possible points. UTEP was also ranked 110th nationally out of the 400 universities that the publication scored for student experience.
As a part of its efforts to keep student costs low, UTEP announced last month it would freeze tuition and mandatory fees for the next two years.
The WSJ is not the first to recognize UTEP’s impact in improving the trajectory of its graduates. In 2019, MarketWatch named UTEP a top ten university in America for upward mobility, defined as when students enroll in a university and are in the bottom quintile of family income, but after graduation, move into the top quintile of family income.
About The University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas at El Paso is America’s leading Hispanic-serving University. Located at the westernmost tip of Texas, where three states and two countries converge along the Rio Grande, 84% of our 24,000 students are Hispanic, and half are the first in their families to go to college. UTEP offers 171 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs at the only open-access, top-tier research university in America.
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