MONEY Magazine ranks MIAD among top 10 art & design colleges nationwide

A student working in the Communication Design studio

MILWAUKEE (August 29, 2018) – The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design was ranked among the top art and design colleges in the country in MONEY magazine’s Best Colleges for Your Money in 2018 list. MIAD ranked eighth out of the qualifying 18 Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) schools.

“This ranking recognizes the excellence of our four-year bachelor’s degree program in preparing MIAD students to become successful professionals and leaders in the arts and business communities,” said President Jeff Morin. “Our curriculum continually challenges our students to use their curiosity and their creative and critical thinking skills to innovate and positively contribute to the world around us.”

The ranking also reveals that a MIAD education contributes to the upward mobility of low-income students, as MIAD outscored its Midwestern competitors in this category, with 38% of MIAD students with low-income backgrounds employed in upper-middle-class jobs by their mid 30s. MIAD graduates earn an average salary $42,000 within three years of graduation.

The ranking names MIAD among the top 15% of all degree-granting colleges and universities in the nation, with an overall rank by MONEY of 622.

Students in an Interior Architecture and Design class

To qualify for the rankings, each college must have a minimum enrollment of 500 students, graduation rates at or above the median for its institutional category and not be in financial distress. MONEY then ranked colleges based on 26 factors, including educational quality, affordability and outcomes.

• Educational quality considers each college’s six-year graduation rate, student-to-faculty ratio, financial stability and how many Pell Grant recipients graduate.
• Affordability is calculated using each college’s net price of a degree, estimated average student debt upon graduation, student loan repayment and default risk of graduates and affordability for low-income students.
• Outcomes consider graduates’ earnings, earnings adjusted by majors, employment rates, job meaning and the socio-economic mobility index, among other factors.

A student working in MIAD’s Printmaking Lab

MIAD offers an accredited Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program in five majors – Communication Design, Illustration, Industrial Design, Interior Architecture and Design and New Studio Practice: Fine Arts – and has 18 academic minors, including Arts Management, Furniture Design and Digital Media Production. Graduates work at companies and organizations such as Kohl’s, Fiskars, GE Healthcare, Harley-Davidson Motor Company, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee Tool, Trek and more.

RELATED STORY: MIAD named a Top Design School by GDUSA for Third Consecutive Year