SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development has once again advanced in the U.S. News & World Report 2024-2025 national rankings. Simmons remains in the top 50 and is now ranked #48 out of 255 participating public and private graduate schools of education around the country. That is an improvement from #49 last year.
Simmons maintains the #11 spot among all private universities on the list. Simmons is #1 among private universities in the Southwest and is ranked #3 among all colleges in Texas. Statewide, only the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M at College Station, both public universities, have a ranking higher than Simmons.
According to Leon Simmons Endowed Dean Stephanie L. Knight, Ph.D. who has led SMU Simmons since 2017, “We are very pleased with our continued upward trajectory and steady rise in the rankings. I am grateful to Simmons’ dedicated research faculty members who I believe are the biggest factor in our continued advancement.”
To rank schools of education, U.S. News & World Report considers many factors including research activity, academic quality, faculty resources, student selectivity, doctoral degrees granted, as well as peer assessment scores.
External funding per tenured faculty member at Simmons is $647,695 which is a dramatic increase from 2019 when $143,700 per faculty member was reported. In fact, Simmons is ranked #1 among all colleges of education in Texas in terms of funded research per faculty member.
Knight says that Simmons will continue to look for ways to further improve learning through research. “Our researchers will remain diligent in their meaningful work not for the rankings but more importantly to improve learning for students here and around the world.”
The latest national rankings were released online on April 9, 2024, and can be found at http://bit.ly/2024TopEducationSchools