Where Colorado Springs colleges rank

State of play: The Air Force Academy was named the 3rd best public school in a ranking of national liberal arts colleges and 11th overall in the category, according to the U.S. News and World Report list.

• The school's engineering programs also landed multiple Top 10 rankings.

Colorado College ranked as the 31st best private school and tied for No. 34 in the national liberal arts colleges category.

• On the list of most innovative schools, it was No. 2 in a survey of top academics.

The big picture: Colorado School of Mines in Golden was the top-ranked in the state at No. 80, followed by CU Boulder, which fell off U.S. News & World Report's top 100 to land at No. 109 among national universities.

Zoom in: Other local colleges and universities also drew recognition.

• Colorado State University Pueblo tied for 72nd best in the regional universities in the West category.
• Colorado Technical University and the University of Colorado- Colorado Springs were in the range of No. 382-422 for the national universities category.
• Pikes Peak State College went unranked.

The fine print: This year's rankings aren't exactly apples-to-apples comparisons.

• U.S. News changed its methodology for the 2027 edition, replacing a measure of graduate debt with a new "earnings by major" metric.
• That compares graduates' earnings four years after college with those who studied the same field elsewhere.