How TIME and Statista Determined America’s Best Colleges of 2026-2027

Learning environment contributes 15% to the final score.

The student-to-faculty ratio measures how many undergraduate students are served, on average, by each instructional staff member at an institution. A lower ratio indicates that each faculty member is responsible for fewer students, which is generally associated with greater opportunity for direct interaction, individualized instruction, and academic mentorship. Final scores are expressed as percentile ranks, with lower ratios receiving higher ranks.

This metric captures the financial resources an institution directs toward its students, expressed on a per-head basis. Institutions that spend more per student are generally better positioned to provide a high-quality learning environment, regardless of their overall size.

The expenditure figure is constructed by averaging across several spending categories that reflect direct and indirect investment in the student experience: instructional expenditure, academic support, student services, institutional support, and scholarships and fellowship expenses. This average is then divided by average full-time equivalent undergraduate enrollment to produce a per-student figure. To account for differing reporting forms across institution types in IPEDS, expenditure data is drawn from separate sources for public and private non-profit institutions respectively, and subsequently combined into a single figure per institution.