NGU tops U.S. News most efficient college list

TIGERVILLE, S.C. – Top honors as the most efficient school among regional colleges in the South went to North Greenville University in an exclusive U.S. News analysis that compared spending and educational quality.

U.S. News looked at the public and private colleges that scored the highest on overall undergraduate academic educational quality — as measured by their position in the 2015 Best Colleges rankings, but that spent relatively less on their educational programs to achieve that quality.

Amid restricted growth in many state budgets to fund higher education and increased public scrutiny about the rising cost of going to college, it’s vitality important for many colleges to efficiently spend their limited resources to produce the highest educational quality.

In their analysis, U.S. News measured financial resources by taking into account how much a school spends per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures. The financial resources indicator has a 10 percent weight in the Best Colleges ranking methodology.

The lists are based on operating efficiency, which U.S. News has defined as a school’s 2013 fiscal year financial resources per student divided by its overall score – the basis they use to determine its overall numerical rank in the 2015 Best Colleges rankings.

According to U.S. News blogger, Bob Morse, “schools that are featured on the lists are doing a good job in managing their financial resources relative to other schools that may have far greater financial resources because of more state funding, higher tuition or larger endowments.”

Only schools that were numerically ranked in the top half of their ranking category in the 2015 Best College rankings were included in this analysis. In that ranking, North Greenville came in at 25 in the Regional Colleges (South) category.