Fordham University has topped another list of the best schools for career-driven students. But this time, to add a twist to the familiar story of school rankings, the list comes from a popular networking site and focuses on which school’s graduates are landing the most desirable jobs.
LinkedIn, the job networking platform with 313 million users, recently released its rankings of the top 25 institutions in each of eight “in-demand” careers: accounting, design, finance, investment banking, marketing, media, software development, and software development at startups.
Fordham is ranked the No. 8 best school for media professionals, sharing the list with institutions such as New York University (No. 1) and Duke University (No. 3). It also scored the No. 15 spot for accounting professionals, coming in just behind fellow Jesuit schools Boston College (No. 3) and Fairfield University (No. 7).
To make the rankings, LinkedIn first identified the top companies where professionals in these eight fields were choosing to work. This was done by assigning points to companies that both attracted and retained workers. Then, the site identified which of its users were working in these fields and where they attended school. Finally, it calculated the percentage of graduates who had landed jobs at the top companies.
“In many ways, this might be a more valuable approach than just wages, in that it does appear to represent what individuals feel about their jobs and education,” said Todd Massa, director of policy research and date warehousing at State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, in an Inside Higher Ed release.
The rankings considered only LinkedIn users who had earned an undergraduate degree within the last eight years in order to reflect the most recent employment trends.
Click here to see the full list of rankings.
