Money Magazine Names Babson College Top Five for Business Majors in the United States

WELLESLEY, Mass., July 13, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Babson College has been recognized by Money magazine as one of the top five U.S. schools for business majors in its new 2017 Best Colleges For Your Money ranking—"beating the competition on educational quality, affordability, and the career payoff for undergraduate business majors."

Overall, Babson is ranked in the top 10 percent of colleges nationwide, coming in at No. 58 out of all 711 listed.

According to Money: At Babson College, "the focus on business is the big draw and provides a big payoff. Students get hands-on experience from the start, launching a business as part of a freshman team (profits go to charity) and by continuing interaction with local companies" through experiential learning opportunities like Babson's Management Consulting Field Experience (MCFE) and via internships and an Externship program.

"The result of all that real-world learning: Babson alums report earning an average of roughly $59,800 a year within five years of graduation—about 18 percent more than the average for recent grads of comparable schools."

Money also named Babson No. 8 among colleges that add the most value—those that help students do "far better than would be expected from their academic and economic backgrounds."

Babson College's return on investment is reflected in the success of its graduates and recognition from an array of leading organizations:

• For the last five years, more than 98 percent of Babson graduates secured employment or attended graduate school within six months of graduation.
• PayScale named Babson College the No. 1 private business school for return on investment in its 2017 PayScale College ROI Report.
• Babson alumni who do not receive financial aid enjoy a 20-year net return on investment of $726,000, according to PayScale. The 20-year net return on investment for alumni who receive financial aid is even greater—$858,000. (This is based on a four-year degree program. Return on investment could be more if students take advantage of the accelerated degree option.)
• The Princeton Review also recognized Babson as "one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduates seeking a superb education with great career preparation at an affordable price" in its new book, Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Schools That Give You the Best Bang for Your Tuition Buck.
• The U.S. Department of Education named Babson top 10 for alumni earnings among all private nonprofits and No. 2 among national business program peers.

For the first time, Money magazine included a measurement based on socioeconomic mobility with data from The Equality of Opportunity Project. Earlier this year, the research findings revealed that Babson is the No. 1 private business college, and No. 10 nationwide, for student income mobility. Of Babson students who come from families whose incomes are in the bottom fifth nationwide, 68 percent vault from the bottom income bracket to the top after graduating from Babson.  

"College is a lifetime investment, and we are proud that a Babson degree delivers such strong returns for our students and their families," says Babson College President Kerry Healey. "We empower our students to graduate on time or even at an accelerated pace, and are thrilled to see the impact Babson alumni make in their businesses and communities around the world."

"We appreciate that Money magazine's ranking recognizes Babson as a top college for business education, and for the value-add that our students capitalize on through Babson's integrated business and liberal arts curriculum," says Babson College Undergraduate School Dean Ian Lapp. "The lessons learned at Babson through class-based simulations, experiential fieldwork, cocurricular activities, and internships extend long past graduation."

In Babson's Money magazine profile, Babson students are quoted as saying:

• "Babson specializes in entrepreneurship—they encourage students to apply Entrepreneurial Thought & Action^® to every situation they encounter in life, be it starting their own business or simply trying to solve a problem."
• "The career opportunities if you have a degree from this school are endless."
• "Love the environment and the community. The professors know what they are talking about and have experience in their respective fields. The college does a lot for their students and the opportunities afterward are awesome."

According to Money, the magazine "has drawn on the research and advice of dozens of the nation's top experts on education quality, financing, and value to develop a new, uniquely practical analysis of more than 700 of the nation's best-performing colleges." The publication measured 27 factors in three categories:

• Quality of Education—including graduation rate, quality of both peers and faculty, and a new factor added in 2017: institutional financial troubles.
• Affordability—measuring the net price of a degree, student debt, loan repayment and default risk, affordability for low-income students, and more.
• Outcomes—which measures graduate earnings, earnings adjusted by majors, Federal College Scorecard 10-year earnings, the estimated market value of alumni's average job skills, value-added earnings (to see if a school is helping launch students to better-paying jobs than competitors), whether students see their work as 'making the world a better place', and for the first time: the socioeconomic mobility index with data provided by the Equality of Opportunity Project revealing the percentage of students each school moves from low-income backgrounds to upper-middle class jobs by the time the student is 34 years old.

Money magazine's methodology in more detail

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds^®. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action^® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

CONTACT: Brianna Radicioni, [email protected]

SOURCE Babson College

Related Links

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