FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (8/14/97)
Contact: Lynn Stewart, Centenary News Service
318-869-5120 or 869-5709
SHREVEPORT, LA -- Money magazine has listed Centenary College of Louisiana among the nation's 150 "Best College Values" in information released today in advance of its September issue. Centenary was the only college in Louisiana to be named.
Centenary was also ranked No. 12 in Money's listing of "Best Buys in Your Area" for states in the Southwest.
"When you weigh the education they provide against the prices they charge, all the schools here are exceptional buys," the article stated. The value rankings list schools that "offer a terrific payoff for the price," said writer Derek Gordon.
Money editors noted that the rankings were based on an analysis of the cost and academic quality of more than 1,100 four-year undergraduate schools. To arrive at its rankings, Money analyzed 16 measures of educational quality, including entrance exam results, faculty resources and deployment, library resources, instructional and student services budgets, graduation rates and default ratios on graduates' student loans.
The magazine then compared those data with tuition and fees at each of 1,115 colleges to arrive at a value rating. The data were collected by Money and Wintergreen/Orchard House, a New Orleans-based publisher of college directories.
The magazine's rankings include all four-year undergraduate schools that answered Wintergreen/Orchard House and Money surveys, except for those with fewer than 250 students, fewer than three majors, part-time enrollments of more than 45 percent or no dormitories.
Centenary, founded in 1825, is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It is the nation's oldest privately chartered college west of the Mississippi.
- 30 -