Fresno State Again Tops College Rankings for Affordability, Social Mobility

Fresno State News

Fresno State — with a mission to educate and empower students for success — ranked No. 36 in Washington Monthly’s 2022 National University Rankings of colleges and universities that best serve the country in the areas of social mobility, research, and public service.

The university also ranked No. 22 in the Best Bang for the Buck: West category, published Monday, for how well it helps less-affluent students attain marketable degrees at affordable prices.

Washington Monthly, known for its annual rankings of American colleges and universities, has published its list of top schools for the past 18 years with what it calls “a different kind of college ranking,” calling attention to colleges based on their contribution to the public good, not prestige or wealth.

This is the seventh straight year Fresno State has ranked among the top 50 national universities — and the seventh straight year Fresno State has been the highest-ranked campus in the California State University system.

At No. 36, Fresno State ranks alongside notable Pac 12 Conference institutions, including No. 1 Stanford; No. 9 University of California, Berkeley; No. 19 Washington; and No. 21 UCLA.

“Fresno State is uniquely positioned as a university with limitless potential, especially as it impacts the lives of tens of thousands of students each year in our region and beyond,” said Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval. “Many of our first-generation graduates are becoming inspirational leaders whose accomplishments will set the foundation for their families to prosper for generations. Fresno State’s record-setting research funding and service to the community is helping to drive the local economy, educate the workforce, and spread Bulldog spirit up and down the Central Valley.”

$48.2M in Research Grants

Fresno State set a record-high in research grants for the 2020-21 academic year, receiving 356 grants for $48.2 million. The university recently earned R2 designation as a “Doctoral University – High Research Activity” by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, highlighting a significant commitment to growing research activities. Fresno State awarded 76 doctoral degrees in the past academic year. The university offers doctoral degrees in nursing, physical therapy, and educational leadership.

Students, faculty, and staff continued their longstanding culture of service by providing more than 1 million hours of service to community organizations for the 13th year in a row.

The Central Valley, which is represented by the green V featured on Fresno State’s Bulldog logo, spans from Bakersfield in the south to Sacramento in the north — an area roughly the size of the state of Tennessee. Fresno, the only major city in the U.S. within an hour’s drive of three national parks, also is the hub of the most productive agricultural region in the world.

Fresno State continues to show its commitment to education and the community in various ways, including:

• Three faculty and one student earned Fulbright research awards this year. Sydney Fox, a biochemistry major who graduated this past spring, earned the Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to conduct research at Reykjavik University in Iceland. Dr. Benjamin Boone will study musical pedagogy and create and record new music at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Dr. Melanie Ram will research sub-regional intergovernmental organizations that emerged in Europe since the end of the Cold War, at the University of Zagreb and the University of Bucharest. Dr. Devendra Sharma will research swang-nautanki, a folk opera tradition in Northern India, and its traditional akhārās, the swang-nautanki community performance groups.
• The Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology received $18.75 million in one-time funding from the state to provide infrastructure needed to build programs that prepare future generations for regenerative agriculture practices. This will build long-term stability for food and agricultural systems in the face of changing climate patterns.
• Sociology Professor Dr. Amber Crowell received a $350,000 National Science Foundation grant to analyze long-term patterns and trends of residential segregation in urban areas, connecting present-day segregation patterns to their historical roots in a project called “Mapping the Origins of Segregation using GIS Resources.”

Fresno State is also among the nation’s best colleges when it comes to quality, affordability and outcomes ranking No. 29 in Money’s 2022 Best Colleges list announced May 16.

Washington Monthly 2022 Top 40 National Universities

1. Stanford University
2. University of Pennsylvania
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4. Princeton University
5. Duke University
6. Harvard University
7. Yale University
8. Cornell University
9. University of California, Berkeley
10. University of Notre Dame
11. University of California, Davis
12. Dartmouth College
13. Brigham Young University
14. California Institute of Technology
15. Georgetown University
16. University of Wisconsin-Madison
17. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
18. National Louis University
19. University of Washington, Seattle
20. University of California, San Diego
21. University of California, Los Angeles
22. Utah State University
23. Johns Hopkins University
24. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
25. Columbia University, in the City of NY
26. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
27. Washington University in St. Louis
28. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
29. Vanderbilt University
30. Northwestern University
31. University of Virginia
32. Florida International University
33. University of Florida
34. Carnegie Mellon University
35. Boston College
36. California State University, Fresno
37. Lehigh University
38. Rutgers University–Newark
39. University of Minnesota Twin Cities
40. Brown University