ECU ranks in top 10% of Best Bang for the Buck schools in the Southeast | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of ECU News Services. The author of this post is ECU News Services.

    East Carolina University is in the top 10% of Best Bang for the Buck schools in the Southeast according to a ranking released Monday by Washington Monthly. ECU rose 16 spots over last year and was eighth out of 51 schools in North Carolina.

    In addition, ECU ranked in the top 20% of all national universities and was named one of 204 Best Colleges for Student Voting. It's the fourth consecutive year that ECU has been recognized for its commitment to increasing student voting.

    "We rank four-year schools (national universities, liberal arts colleges, baccalaureate colleges, and master's universities) based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility, research and providing opportunities for public service," Washington Monthly said on its website. "We also rank Best Bang for the Buck colleges, which help non-wealthy students obtain marketable degrees at affordable prices."

    In the best-for-the-buck category, ECU ranked 26th out of 278 institutions in the Southeast region, which includes colleges and universities from Alabama, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

    ECU's rankings went up in every category over last year.

    Nationally, ECU was 78th out of 391 schools ranked in 2021. ECU's service, social mobility and research rankings were 66th, 70th and 224th, respectively.

    Because social mobility, research, and community and national service are equally weighted, "top-ranked colleges needed to be excellent across the full breadth of our measures, rather than excelling in just one measure," Washington Monthly said about its methodology.

    A total of 1,466 colleges - public, private, nonprofit and for-profit - were evaluated for the 2021 College Guide.