Fordham Business Education Noted in Influential Collegiate Rankings

The College of Business Administration’s Finance and Accounting areas have been ranked 21 and 27 nationally in the latest edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” issue.

The online component of the magazine, which went live on Aug. 17, also ranks Fordham University at No. 56 among the 262 most prestigious national—or “top-tier”—universities.

“That the strength of Fordham's undergraduate business program is being recognized comes as no surprise to me,” said Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of CBA and business faculty. “Our dedicated and hardworking students, faculty and alumni form an extended entrepreneurial community, and have New York City—the money capital of the world—for their laboratory. Wherever our graduates go, they are equipped to be leaders in their fields.”

The marketing area was also ranked fourth in a list of undergraduate specialties released by Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine in May. In addition, the college was ranked eighth in ethics; ninth in business law; 19th in finance; and 23rd in accounting.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek surveyed more than 85,000 students at more than 100 top business schools and asked them to rate their programs’ performance in a dozen academic disciplines ranging from accounting and ethics to marketing and sustainability. The list ranked specialty areas from the 50 top undergraduate business programs.

The U.S. News rankings come two weeks after Fordham boosted its academic and quality-of-life ratings in the 2011 version of The Princeton Review’s influential college guide: The Best 373 Colleges: 2011 Edition.

Fordham also earned the distinction of being one of eight schools in the top tier that has no more than 1 percent of its classes larger than 50 students. In fact, 50 percent of the University’s classes had 20 students or fewer.

The magazine defines top-tier national universities as those that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees, often with an emphasis on research. The top category is based on guidelines from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and includes 164 public and 98 private institutions.

U.S. News uses a proprietary methodology that ranks more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools based on a set of 16 indicators of academic quality. Among the key measures of quality the magazine factors are peer assessments, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources and student selectivity.