The U.S. Coast Guard Academy has again been listed as one of the top institutions of higher education by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review and Forbes magazine college rankings.
U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings are a thorough examination of how more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools in the U.S. compare in a set of widely-accepted indicators of excellence. This year the academy again ranked No. 1 in the Top Public Schools Regional Colleges North, and No. 2 in the overall Regional Colleges North categories. The academy was also ranked 11th in the Best in Undergraduate Engineering Programs category.
Focusing on academic excellence, the methodology of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings were updated this year to further emphasize student outcomes, which hold the most weight at 35 percent – up from 30 percent last year. Through this update, U.S. News is measuring how well schools support low-income students through graduation. The U.S. Coast Guard Academy offers a guaranteed job upon graduation as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Meanwhile, the America’s Top Colleges issue from Forbes placed the academy at No. 10 in the Top 25 Public Colleges list, and at No. 9 in the Top STEM Colleges list. The Princeton Review also ranked the academy in their Best 382 Colleges publication, a listing of the top 15 percent of colleges and universities in America.
The U.S. Coast Guard Academy is adding a new academic program: Beginning with the Class of 2022, it will offer an academic major in Cyber Systems. The U.S. Coast Guard has identified cyberspace as an operating domain in its Cyber Strategy plan, specifically pointing to defending cyberspace, enabling operations and protecting infrastructure as strategic priorities critical to overall mission success.
This fall, the service academy will open a new 2,000-square-foot cyber lab that will house dedicated servers, a working laboratory and a uniquely designed classroom. In addition, a variety of cyber-related summer internships will be made available to interested and qualified cadets.
The Academy also has a Cyber Team, which participates in a variety of organized competitions such as the Cyber Defense Exercise, a nationwide cyber defense competition between the federal service academies conducted by the National Security Agency.
