The US News & World Report college rankings for 2020 were released today. The classification criteria has changed and the University of Detroit Mercy is no longer considered a “Regional University” but rather lumped in with the Harvards and Michigans of the collegiate world as a “National University.”
Detroit Mercy was ranked #179, tied with St. John’s, Idaho and U-Mass Lowell. Was surprised that we fared better than big state schools like #185 Houston, #192 Louisville, #218 Texas Tech, #228 West Virginia, and #272 Memphis. Where some Michigan schools fell: Michigan is #25, MSU #84, Michigan Tech #147, GVSU #228, CMU #240, Wayne St. is #246.
Some info on Horizon schools: Among National Universities, UIC is at #132, Detroit Mercy #179, IUPUI #228. CSU, NKU, Oakland, Milwaukee and Wright St. were lumped together in a tier numerically defined as #293-381. Green Bay is considered a Regional University and is #95 in the Midwest, Youngstown St. (and incoming Purdue Fort Wayne) are in the same classification category and both are ranked in a tier numbered #117-153. (Last year, Detroit Mercy was ranked #25 amongst Midwest Regional Universities.)
The following is cut and pasted from US News regarding the classification of schools:
National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research or award professional practice doctorates.
Regional Universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. We ranked them in four geographical groups: North, South, Midwest and West.
To place each school in its ranking, U.S. News strictly maps its categories to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education's Basic Classification system. The U.S. Department of Education and many higher education associations use the Carnegie system to organize or label their data, among other uses. In short, the Carnegie categories are the accepted standard in U.S. higher education.
In February 2019, Carnegie released official updates – called the "2018 Update" – including the Basic system. U.S. News first used this 2018 Update in the 2020 Best Colleges rankings.
Carnegie's 2018 Update reclassified many institutions. Most significantly, it added a professional practice doctoral category into its universe of doctoral universities. Consequently, even though U.S. News' mapping between its ranking categories and Carnegie Classifications was unchanged, many schools are categorized in different U.S. News rankings for the 2020 edition compared with the previous edition. This underscores that the total number of schools ranked in our National Universities ranking increased by more than 25% year-to-year while total ranked Regional Universities decreased by approximately 10% year-to-year.