Federal Data · No Paid Rankings
Best Colleges in Rhode Island
Top Rhode Island colleges ranked by what actually matters after graduation: earnings, completion rates, and what you actually pay. Federal data. No surveys, no sponsorships.
How We Rank Rhode Island Colleges
Rankings use a composite score from federal data: graduate earnings (28%), graduation rate (25%), social mobility via Pell Grant share (20%), debt burden (15%), and net cost for low-income students (12%). Where a school has not reported one of these, that component is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled rather than filled in with an estimate. Two adjustments apply: the earnings component is reduced by 13% for schools where graduate students are more than 20% of enrollment and by 25% where they are more than 30%, and a school with no net price on file for families earning up to $30,000 is scored on its overall average net price instead. Only 4-year non-profit schools with sufficient data qualify.
- →Earnings: Median annual earnings 10 years after enrollment. Source: College Scorecard.
- →Graduation rate: Full-time first-time students completing within 150% of normal time. Source: IPEDS.
- →Net price: Average annual cost after all grants and scholarships. Source: IPEDS.
- →Social mobility: Share of students receiving Pell Grants, a direct measure of access for low-income students. Source: IPEDS.
- →Debt burden: Median federal loan debt at graduation. Source: College Scorecard.
Top 10 Colleges in Rhode Island (2026)
Ranked by composite: earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.
| # | School | Earnings (10yr) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Brown University Providence, RI | $93,487 |
| 2 |  Rhode Island College Providence, RI | $56,318 |
| 3 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI | $69,743 |
| 4 | New England Institute of Technology East Greenwich, RI | $48,684 |
| 5 |  Providence College Providence, RI | $87,054 |
| 6 |  Bryant University Smithfield, RI | $90,008 |
| 7 | Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI | $68,140 |
| 8 |  Salve Regina University Newport, RI | $72,975 |
| 9 |  Roger Williams University Bristol, RI | $70,266 |
| 10 |  Johnson & Wales University-Providence Providence, RI | $43,418 |
10 Rhode Island schools in dataset. All shown. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.
All 10 Colleges in the Dataset
Every school in the dataset is already in the ranking above. This list links to each school profile.
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