STEUBENVILLE, OH—Franciscan University of Steubenville has been named to the Kiplinger’s Personal Finance list of the Top 300 Best College Values of 2017.

Franciscan University ranked in the top 50 on the magazine’s list of 100 best values in the Private Universities category, putting Franciscan in the company of Notre Dame, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and other nationally recognized institutions of higher learning.

This means Franciscan falls in the top 12 percent of the 1,200 institutions Kiplinger’s gauged for quality and affordability.

To help students and their parents understand the true value of a particular university, Kiplinger restricts its analysis to measurable standards of academic quality and affordability. In this year’s rankings, Franciscan was fourth least expensive among all 100 schools for its total cost per year.

Franciscan’s academic quality was rated primarily by its four-year graduation rate and the number of returning sophomores—both strong indicators that Franciscan University does an exceptional job of retaining and graduating students.

In its own marker of academic quality, Franciscan University conducted a comprehensive survey of the graduating class of 2015 and found that 98 percent of bachelor’s degree graduates were employed, in graduate school, or serving the Catholic Church within a year of degree completion.

Located in southeastern Ohio, Franciscan University of Steubenville educates, evangelizes, and sends forth joyful disciples worldwide. The University attracts over 2,400 students from all 50 states and 12 countries with its integration of excellent academics and a passionately Catholic faith environment. With 39 undergraduate degrees, 8 graduate programs, and a popular study-abroad program in Austria, Franciscan University has ranked in the elite “top tier” of Midwest universities in U.S. News & World Report’s guidebook on “America’s Best Colleges” since 1998. It is also on the FORBES select list of America’s Top Colleges and the Cardinal Newman Society’s Guide to Choosing a Catholic College.