FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The rating of the University of Arkansas remained very little changed in the 2007 edition of the U.S. News & World Report's college rankings guide, America's Best Colleges, although two important criteria showed improvement again this year. Both the peer assessment and the graduation rate continued to improve, but the University of Arkansas remained in the third tier of universities.

The Sam M. Walton College of Business continued to be ranked among the top 50 business programs nationwide and among the top 25 public business programs.

“We’re very glad to see improvements in our peer assessment and graduation rate, and we expect to continue advancing in those areas,” said Chancellor John A. White. “Progressing at the national level is a long-term process, and we believe the success we’ve had in recent years will continue to bear fruit in the future years.

“U.S. News & World Report’s guide gives us a snapshot of our strengths and our challenges, and it gives us a way to compare ourselves against our peers,” White said. “We’ve acted smartly and wisely in many of our academic investments, and we expect to see dividends — higher-achieving students, more rigorous teaching and research, and an increased effectiveness of our outreach, both in Arkansas and the broader world.”

“We’ve done a good job of retaining our first-year students, and our six-year graduation rate increases each year, but we need to keep improving the results in these areas to match our peers, who are also working hard to improve higher education,” said White.

Based on a 5-point scale, the peer assessment score, which rose from 2.7 in the 2006 guide to 2.9 in the 2007 guide, reflects the subjective evaluations of college officials at universities in the peer group of the University of Arkansas. The graduation rate rose from 53 percent to 56 percent.

Two values used by the guide to rank the University of Arkansas remained unchanged from the 2006 guide: the average annual alumni giving rate (21 percent) and the average freshman retention rate (83 percent).

Values for three interrelated categories were slightly negative because of the higher number of freshmen accepted during the fall of 2005. The acceptance rate increased from 78 percent to 87 percent, and the percentage of freshmen who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class slipped slightly from 36 percent to 32 percent. This also decreased the percentage of classes that have 20 students or fewer, from 41 percent in the 2006 guide to 36 percent in the 2007 guide.

“The rankings related to our enrollment growth are good problems to have,” said Provost Bob Smith, the vice chancellor for academic affairs. “They show some of the challenges we face in trying to push forward on all fronts.

“These rankings tell us where we were at one moment in time last year; and, of course, the university is already moved past that point and is poised to move even further into a new school year,” he said. “We can learn from rankings like these, and we move on from here.”