The University of Arizona is one of the top public universities in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranking of the best U.S. colleges.

UArizona ranked No. 131 overall and No. 33 among public universities in the 2022 WSJ/THE College Rankings, released Tuesday. The overall ranking is a four-spot improvement over last year and an 86-spot leap from 2019. This is UArizona's best placement in the six-year history of this ranking.

"We are so pleased to see the University of Arizona continue to improve in these rankings," said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. "It is gratifying to see such prestigious publications recognize the efforts of our talented faculty and staff in creating an engaging learning environment for our students."

The WSJ/THE College Rankings are based on 15 key indicators that assess colleges in four areas: outcomes, resources, engagement and environment.

• Outcomes accounts for 40% of the weighting and measures things such as the salary graduates earn and the debt burden they accrue.
• Resources, with a 30% weighting, analyzes the spending schools put into instruction and student services.
• Engagement, drawn mostly from a student survey and with a 20% weight, examines views on things like teaching and interactions with faculty and other students.
• Environment, at 10%, assesses the diversity of the university community.

The student survey was not completed again this year. WSJ/THE rankings officials determined last year that due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was unreasonable to expect institutions to invest time and effort surveying their students during a crisis, and were additionally concerned that the data would have been biased by students' experience of a move to online-only teaching, making it a less than reliable indicator of general teaching success. For this ranking, the scores obtained by institutions two years previous were used.

Enrollment is based on the number of full-time-equivalent undergraduate students as published in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System for the 2018-19 academic year.

Academic spending per student data is adjusted to account for regional price differences using regional price parity data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The full methodology can be viewed on the THE website.