St. Thomas participates in private-college Web site initiative

The University of St. Thomas is one of 13 Minnesota private colleges to join the University and College Accountability Network, or UCAN, a new national Web site designed to help prospective students evaluate and choose colleges.

Concise, easily accessible and free, UCAN consists of hundreds of institutional profiles that cover admissions, enrollment, student demographics, graduation rates, most-common fields of study, transfer of credit policy, accreditation, faculty information, class size, tuition and fees trends, price of attendance, average debt load at graduation, financial aid, campus housing, student life and campus safety.

Click here to see St. Thomas' UCAN page.

Spearheaded by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, UCAN is an alternative to the U.S. News and World Report rankings and puts less emphasis on ratings and more on objective, quantifiable data.

Parents and prospective students will be able to lay out printouts of various institutions side-by-side for easy comparison because all profiles share a common format.

The other participating Minnesota schools are Augsburg College, Carleton College, College of St. Benedict, Concordia College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Hamline University, Macalester College, Northwestern Health Sciences University, Oak Hills Christian College, Pillsbury Baptist Bible College, St. John’s University and St. Olaf College.