A day to remember: FIU celebrates Top 50

The university that never stops has experienced something of a mission-accomplished moment: FIU has notched the No. 46 spot on the list of top public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report. And it is No. 98 among all universities, public and private, in the nation.

The achievement represents a goal the institution set for itself just four years ago when it prioritized reaching the Top 50 by 2025 – and instead has done it 12 months earlier.

FIU has risen faster than any other university over the past 10 years in both the U.S. News public national rankings (moving up 84 spots) and overall national rankings (120 spots).

Since last year, FIU has climbed 18 spots among public universities and 26 spots overall.

“As an FIU alumnus, I’ve never felt prouder to be a Panther,” said Roger Tovar ’92, MAcc ’94, a double alumnus and chairman of the FIU Board of Trustees. “I’ve witnessed firsthand FIU’s rise to the top, and it’s been an incredible journey,” he said in addressing hundreds of students, faculty, staff and alumni at a lively campus gathering. “My FIU degree, and yours, just increased in value. That’s something to celebrate.”

Master’s student Santana Way ’24, who holds a bachelor’s from the university, attended the festivities and welcomed Tovar’s sentiment. “It makes me feel like I'm getting my return on investment for choosing to go to FIU,” he said. “It's amazing that we're Top 50 in the country. It feels really good.”

A PLAN FOR GREATNESS

In 2020, as part of a newly announced five-year strategic plan, which runs until 2025, leaders committed to moving FIU into the loftiest echelons of higher education by actively seeking Top 50 designations from various rankings organizations. Such groups independently evaluate academic performance, research activities, faculty expertise, resource availability and other factors.

Since unveiling the plan, FIU has earned a number of Top 50 rankings, most recently:

• Washington Monthly named FIU the No. 3 public university in the nation – and No. 1 in Florida – in its annual College Guide and Rankings, which recognizes universities for research excellence and their efforts to ensure student success. 
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal named FIU No. 31 among public universities in its Best Colleges 2025 rankings, with the publication giving FIU high marks for social mobility and “student experience,” which measures the quality of campus and social life in addition to ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

Now, with the latest announcement from U.S. News, the university has garnered validation from the organization widely accepted as the gold standard.

The excellent rankings follow FIU’s making good earlier this year on another strategic goal: attaining the designation of “Preeminent State Research University” from the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s 12 public institutions of higher education. The distinction confirms that a university has met a dozen critical benchmarks, or performance metrics, among them a four-year graduation rate of 60% or higher at a time when the national average is 33.3%.

Setting in motion the ambitious plan in 2020 was the Board of Trustees, the volunteer group that advises the university on critical matters and helps determine the institution’s direction. Dean Colson, a current trustee, served at the time as chair of the body. He previously served as a member and the chair of the Board of Governors and recalls that the introduction in 2014 of the performance-metric system in 2014 made people around the state “nervous” but has since paved the way for “extraordinary” advances at places such as FIU.

“I’ve always believed that if you really want to improve, you’ve got to measure improvement every year. And, by golly, FIU sure has done an amazing job,” Colson said of FIU’s continuing rise within the State University System, where it has joined the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida as leading institutions.

“The national rankings measure the same things we in the university community measure: educating students, graduating them on time, with as little debt as possible. What I’m proudest of is . . . that our Pell grant students” – those who qualify for need-based government grants -  “graduate at a little bit better rate than even our non-Pell students. There’s no place else in the country that can make that claim. It’s an extraordinary accomplishment by FIU.”

Notably, U.S. News named FIU No. 1 in the category of “social mobility,” making it the nation’s top-ranked university for contributing to the upward economic mobility of its graduates. 

Rebecca Friedman, a history professor and director of the Wolfsonsian Public Humanities Lab at FIU, served as a faculty representative on the steering committee charged with establishing the 2020-25 plan.

“I’m extremely proud, and I’m not surprised,” Friedman said of the university’s leap in the rankings. “There was a real effort to listen to faculty, to listen across the university and to really focus on research, student success and community engagement,” she said of the work that went into the plan.

And she, like Colson, emphasized the uniqueness of what FIU has now achieved.

“FIU has intellectual capacity [coupled] with a focus on social mobility. It is an unusual combination. I speak with a lot of people who work at research universities and a lot of people who work at universities where the college degree is going to make a difference to individuals and their families. But few have emphasized both. And that’s what has gotten us where we are.”

FACULTY AS BACKBONE

Much of the credit for high rankings rests with the 1,400-strong faculty. Leaders point to professors’ work in the lab, in the archives, in the classroom and in the community as the foundation. The administration recognizes that faculty themselves raise the bar continually by stepping up their grant-funded investigations and engaging and encouraging students.

“This ranking confirms that our faculty are all that and more,” said Provost, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Office Elizabeth Béjar. “I am proud that they have led the charge through groundbreaking research, innovative teaching and mentoring that makes a difference. They helped get us here, and they will continue to be the key moving forward.”

President Kenneth A. Jessell recognized the contributions of faculty and the many dedicated others.

“This ranking is a testament to the value of all members of our community continually doing their best,” Jessell said. “It speaks to the high level of research and teaching of our faculty, to the deep commitment of our staff and volunteer leaders, and to the unrelenting pursuit of excellence on the part of our students. Together, we have attained our goal and we will continue to reach even higher.”

NO STOPPING NOW

The latest news has no one resting on their laurels.

“As long as we continue to really engage and support our students, I think that will be a major contributor to staying at the top,” said Vicenta Shepard Ed.S. ’20, Ph.D. ’23, director of the Center for Academic Success and now the mother of an FIU freshman with a double major. She has seen firsthand – through the university tutoring hub that she heads - the value of supporting undergraduates in intentional and innovative ways. These include the addition, years ago, of “active-learning classrooms” that encourage small-group problem-solving in STEM courses and the use of peer “learning assistants” to reinforce important class concepts and encourage student collaboration, among other initiatives.

“I’m definitely embracing it,” said Shepard of the work ahead to keep FIU climbing.

Such an attitude bodes well for the university’s next strategic plan, to be formally unveiled next year, which has a stated goal of achieving a national Top 30 public ranking by 2030. It’s an aim that Trustee Colson says FIU is fully poised to meet and would place the university squarely among the best in the land.

“When you try to become Top 30, you’re getting to [the level of] really outstanding universities in this country that are a lot older than us,” he said of 52-year-old FIU. “And I think we can make it happen. The end goal is to have a great public university in South Florida, and we’re there. And it’s just going to get greater.”