Walton College, JBU Climb in Rankings

Walton College Rankins
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Walton College 25, University of Arkansas 120, John Brown University 8.

That’s the score this year from U.S. News & World Report, which has become the national authority on ranking colleges.

The UA’s Walton College of Business ranking was among undergraduate public business schools. The UA as a whole was 120 in the “national universities” category. And JBU’s eighth-place ranking was among bachelor’s-degree colleges in the South.

Walton Impact

As the UA raises funds and bolsters its reputation, the annual rankings from U.S. News have become increasingly important as a barometer of improvement.

The Walton College, in particular, has been climbing in the rankings, thanks in large part to the attention brought by the Walton family of Bentonville.

The Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation gave the business school $50 million in 1998, and the school was subsequently named for the late Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam M. Walton.

Four years later, the Walton Family Foundation gave a $300 million endowment to the UA ($200 million for the honors college and $100 million for the Graduate School). It was the largest donation ever to a public university.

The Walton College was tied for No. 25 among public undergraduate business schools in this year’s U.S. News ranking. That’s up from No. 28 last year and No. 40 in 2002.

Before the college was named for Walton, it wasn’t ranked at all by U.S. News.

“Six years ago, the Walton College set as its goal to be among the Top 25 public undergraduate business schools in the nation,” Doyle Z. Williams, dean of the Walton College, said when he announced the ranking.

“At the time, we weren’t on anyone’s chart.”

Among all U.S. undergraduate business schools (both public and private), the Walton College ranked No. 41 this year.

Three other publications have ranked Walton College programs this year:

• The Princeton Review ranked the Walton College’s MBA program No. 8 nationwide in the “most competitive student” category.

• The Academy for Management Journal ranked the Walton College’s management department 19th among public and private universities for “research productivity” between 1998 and 2003.

• For that same time period, the Strategic Management Journal ranked the UA management department 29th in the nation for its research productivity, placing it ahead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University and Stanford University.

The Walton College’s undergraduate program in Supply Chain Management/ Logistics ranked No. 15 among colleges offering that specialty in 2003.

JBU Climbs Again

John Brown University, a private Christian university in Siloam Springs, climbed three places this year to No. 8 in U.S. News’ rankings of the best comprehensive bachelor’s-degree universitities in its Southern Region.

JBU’s ranking has been steadily climbing over the past five years. JBU ranked eleventh in the Southern Region last year and 13th in 2002.

“There is a tremendous amount of information that is reviewed in the ranking process,” said Andrea Phillips, director of university communications at JBU. “This year, we saw a few key numbers shift to our benefit, especially our alumni giving percentage. We had more alumni give to the university this year than ever before.”

Two other Arkansas colleges were ranked in the same category as JBU. Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia ranked No. 5, and University of the Ozarks in Clarksville was tied for No. 9.