Lyon College named one of 'America's Best Colleges'

By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

BATESVILLE — Lyon College is once again on a select list of "America's Best Colleges," according to Forbes.com.

Forbes.com, in conjunction with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, released its ranking of "America's Best Colleges," ranking Lyon College 144th out of the nation's 4,000 colleges and universities. The college is ranked second among schools in Arkansas.

In addition, Lyon is ranked 13th in the "Best Buy - Southern Colleges" division and 20th in the "Best College Buys" division.

The staff at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity gathered data from a variety of sources. The organization based 25 percent of the rankings on four million student evaluations of courses and instructors at the Web site RateMyProfessors. com, another 25 percent on how many of the school's alumni are listed among the notable people in "Who's Who in America" and the average salaries of graduatesreported by Payscale.com.

The other half of the ranking is based on three factors - the average amount of student debt after four years, graduation rates and students or faculty who have won nationally competitive awards.

The "Best College Buys" quality score is calculated by summing each school's score with respect to Who's Who in America citations, salary data from PayScale.com, course evaluations from Rate-MyProfessors.com, the receipt of student and faculty nationally competitive awards and the graduation rate variables used in the Best College rankings.

Three Rivers, Pages 120 on 08/30/2009