Contact: Zack Plair

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State’s online engineering and business graduate programs are listed among the nation’s best, according to U.S. News & World Report rankings released this week.

The university’s James Worth Bagley College of Engineering ranks seventh among the Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs for 2016. That’s up 13 spots from last year’s ranking.

MSU’s College of Business ranks 22nd among the Best Online MBA programs.

MSU President Mark E. Keenum congratulated the Bagley College of Engineering and the College of Business for the national recognition for online graduate programs.

“I’m so pleased to see MSU earn this national recognition,” Keenum said. “The Bagley College of Engineering at MSU has a long history of national and international excellence, and this ‘top 10’ national ranking bears out that fact. Likewise, our College of Business, which in 2015 celebrated its centennial anniversary, is preparing students to lead in the global marketplace.”

For this year’s rankings, statistical information was collected during the summer and fall of 2015 during the U.S. News annual statistical survey of online degree programs.

Jason Keith, dean and professor for the Bagley College of Engineering and holder of the Earnest W. and Mary Ann Deavenport, Jr. Chair, said the strength of the college’s online program is measured by its quality, breadth of offerings, quality instructors and outstanding customer service. Students can take online courses in six engineering disciplines, he added, which has brought about increased student enrollment.

“The Bagley College of Engineering has a tradition of excellence in undergraduate and graduate education, and our online offerings continue that tradition,” Keith said. “We are committed to ensuring that our distance education programs are equivalent in every way to our on campus programs, in both content and rigor. Students can be confident that the online degree they’ve earned will help them to meet their goals, just as a degree earned through traditional methods would.”

The College of Business online MBA program enjoys its second straight top 25 ranking in this year’s list. Dean Sharon Oswald said distance education is “an important part of the College of Business brand at MSU,” as evidenced by the program’s consistently high ranking.

Also ranked among the top online programs are the Distance Master of Science in Information Systems (non-MBA) and the distance graduate program in the College of Education.

“Mississippi State University is committed to providing excellent academic programs at all levels and in all formats. Our online programs are an integral and important component of our academic offerings,” said MSU interim provost and executive vice president Julia Hodges. “Our inclusion in these rankings is a testament to the quality of our faculty, the training in online education provided by our university, and the services and technology that we make available to our online students.”

Established in 1933, U.S. News & World Report releases annual rankings of universities and individual academic programs from across the country and is in its fifth year of collecting data from distance education programs. To see the full rankings, visit http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.