Guide
How the Conference USA list is built
A school is on this page when its IPEDS football conference is Conference USA. The match is the football string. The table is alphabetical. It is not a ranking of the programs, and it is not every university that once used the conference name.
The athletics-division field is a different column. Florida International University's division in this file is Other, and its football conference is Conference USA. The conference string keeps the row. The division value does not remove it.
- Schools
- 10
- States
- 9
- Median admit rate
- 88%
- All schools report a rate
- Median earnings
- $49,732
- 10 years after entry
Conference USA, exactly
IPEDS uses the name Conference USA. This page does not also match American Athletic Conference, the Sun Belt, or an older league a school has left. One string, one page. The football-division field is separate. Kennesaw State's football division in this file is FCS. Florida International's football division is Other. Both stay because the conference string matches.
Liberty, Louisiana Tech, and the other rows are here because the field says so. The page does not argue that the set is permanent. The next file can move a name. This one shows the string that is stored now.
Neighbors in other football leagues
Marshall is a Sun Belt football school in this file, so Marshall is not on this page. Rice is an American Athletic football school, so Rice is not here. A reader who learned an older alignment should trust the field over the memory.
An FCS conference such as the SWAC is a different football division. Those schools are on the FCS page and on their own conference page. They do not fill out Conference USA. Empty football fields stay off entirely.
Read past the division quirk
Start with the conference, then use enrollment and admission rate to tell the campuses apart. A surprising division label on one row is a data value, not a reason to delete the football membership. Open the campus if you need the rest of the athletics record.
Price and earnings below are college medians. They can differ sharply inside one conference. That spread is the point of the columns. It is not a football statistic.
Why the division field is not the test
FBS and FCS pages use the football-division field. Conference pages use the football-conference field. The two fields usually agree and sometimes do not. This page documents the conference, so the conference wins a disagreement.
The same caution applies if you leave this page for the Mountain West or the Sun Belt. Read the source line. It names the field. It does not promise that every secondary athletics code matches the conference.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 9 states. The largest groups are Texas (2), Alabama (1), Florida (1), Georgia (1), and Kentucky (1). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
By reported control, 9 are public and 1 is private nonprofit. A blank control stays out of that split.
Predominant degree is the credential the campus awards most often. On this list it is a bachelor's degree at 10 schools. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, with 50,012 undergraduates, Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, with 41,254 undergraduates, and Florida International University in Miami, Florida, with 39,508 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
10 of 10 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 88%. Schools with no reported rate stay out of the median. A missing rate is not an open door, and it is not a closed one.
The lowest reported admission rates on this list are Florida International University in Miami, Florida, at 55%, Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, at 69%, and Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, at 69%. A lower rate is harder entry. It is not a score for the school.
The highest reported admission rates on this list are The University of Texas at El Paso in El Paso, Texas, at 100%, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, at 99%, and Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at 94%.
What they charge
Among 9 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $9,744. One private college on this list reports a sticker price. That price is $22,465.
Sticker price is not net price. Grants, waivers, and a service commitment can move the bill by a wide margin. Open a school for the net-price figures.
Earnings and graduation
Among 10 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $49,732. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are Florida International University in Miami, Florida, at $60,249, Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, at $57,552, and Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, at $54,211.
Among 10 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 55%. A blank rate is left out. It is not treated as zero.
Also on other lists
Some of these schools also meet the rule for another list on this site. The overlap is a second flag or a second classification. It is not a second ranking.
2 are also on R1 research universities. 5 are also on R2 research universities. 4 are also on Hispanic-serving institutions.
How these figures work
Admission rate, enrollment, sticker price, earnings, and graduation rate all come from the College Scorecard. Earnings are the median 10 years after a student entered the school. Tuition for a public college is the in-state sticker price. Tuition for a private college is the published sticker price. None of these is net price after aid.
A blank field stays blank. This page does not turn a blank admission rate into an open door, a blank fee into a free application, or a blank earnings figure into zero. The table above is membership under the rule in this guide. Sort order is not a quality ranking.