A new ranking by The Economist of all U.S. four-year non-vocational colleges and universities places Drake University 17th in the nation for value. Drake was the only Iowa college to rank in the top 100 in the list of 1,283 colleges. The Economist applied an original mathematical formula to the federal Department of Education’s data on college graduates’ midcareer earnings to identify the gap between how much money each college’s graduates earn and how much they might have made had they studied elsewhere. The study found that Drake University degree recipients earn $8,799 more per year, 10 years after graduation, than they would have been expected to earn had they attended another college or university. A separate ranking by the Brookings Institution last week placed Drake among the top 100 four-year schools in the nation.