Originally published August 28, 2015
By Rachel Anna Neff, Ph.D.
UTEP News Service
As more than 23,000 students streamed onto campus for the start of the fall semester, Washington Monthly magazine ranked The University of Texas at El Paso among the Top 10 universities in the nation for a third consecutive year and #1 in social mobility for the fourth year in a row.
The UTEP Cheer Squad and Paydirt Pete chanted “UTEP” and “Let’s go Miners” on the Centennial Plaza lawn before helping to reveal the good news to the enthusiastic crowd.
“We’ve been at the forefront of redefining excellence in education for the past few years,” President Natalicio began. “We’ve raised awareness, both here in El Paso and across the United States, about the socioeconomic disparities in higher education attainment across this country. We’ve developed very successful strategies to ensure that students in this historically undereducated region have opportunities equivalent to those in more affluent settings. We’ve enabled them to achieve their full potential.
“Our success in fulfilling our access and excellence mission has placed us in a national spotlight,” she continued. “UTEP’s national recognition for providing high-quality educational opportunities to a 21st century student demographic has many facets – innovative faculty teachers, scholars and researchers; a beautiful and vibrant campus climate; alumni whose civic engagement makes a difference in our community; and students who play leadership roles in their classrooms and organizations.”
The 2015 ranking places UTEP in the company of Harvard; Stanford; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Washington.
Keith Barkley, a member of the UTEP Cheer Squad, was excited about the Top 10 ranking.
“I thought getting in the Top 10 again this year was just great,” said the junior pre-nursing major. “I’m very proud of UTEP and I’m so glad UTEP is a Top 10 campus.”
Most impressively, the #1 ranking in the social mobility category demonstrates how UTEP holds open the doors of higher education for those who would most benefit from college. The category seeks to measure universities’ success in outperforming predictions for the graduation of first-generation and low-income students. Social mobility is when people are able to improve their life circumstances regardless of where they start out in life.
“Social mobility is very important because it allows this university to become so diverse – that’s something we’re very well known for,” said Hala Abdel-Jaber, a sophomore studying international politics and an SGA Senator-at-Large. “Social mobility adds to an aspect of the University where it allows students to feel more at home.”
At UTEP, 73 percent of the students who earned a bachelor’s degree during the 2013-14 academic year received Pell Grants, which are awarded to students with financial need. The average annual family income of UTEP students in that same graduating class was $30,031, placing them in the nation’s lowest income group. Thirty-nine percent of their families earned less than $20,000 a year.
UTEP’s success in recruiting, retaining and graduating these students demonstrates that talent crosses gender, ethnic and socioeconomic boundaries, and that an investment in a UTEP degree yields high returns, both for students from a broad range of backgrounds and for U.S. global competitiveness in the 21st century.
Washington Monthly magazine rates schools based on their contribution to the public in three broad categories: social mobility, research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and doctoral graduates) and service (encouraging students to give something back to their region and nation).
By living its mission of access and excellence, UTEP makes it possible for students to attain their highest aspirations no matter where they start out in life. When students from the most modest backgrounds are able to earn a college degree, it transforms their lives and the lives of their families and their communities.