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¿ìÉ«ÊÓƵ was fourth on the national list for economic mobility among online programs in a study of 2,273 colleges. LU was one of only 25 to rank on both the comprehensive list as well as the list of 2017 Most Affordable Online Colleges for Student Economic Mobility, according to SR Education Group, a leading research publisher founded in 2004.

SR Education Group, based in Kirkland, Washington, has been publishing rankings of online colleges since 2009 and awarding scholarships since 2010.

In the project, all annual tuitions were researched and calculated, and the Equality of Opportunity Project provided mobility-rate data. The project is published online at .

To be considered for the listing, schools needed to offer at least 10 fully online degrees at the bachelor's level or higher, and have a mobility rate in the top 20 percent of all schools offering at least 10 online degrees.

A school's mobility rate is the percentage of students from the bottom fifth of income distribution in the United States who rise to the top fifth. The Mobility Rate Percentile is a measure of how schools' mobility rates compare to other eligible schools in our research.

Annual tuition numbers for these schools were manually researched and represent the bachelor's degree level if the school offers at least one online bachelor's degree or the master's degree level if the school offers at least one master's degree and no online bachelor's degrees. Out-of-state tuitions were used unless in-state tuition is offered to all online students. Tuition was calculated assuming full-time status. Unless otherwise stated, bachelor’s programs were assumed to require four years to complete and master’s programs were assumed to require two years.

Mobility rate data is provided by  and is publicly accessible on their website. Pell Grant data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics. The NCES is the primary governmental entity for gathering and presenting data related to education. The NCES data is updated annually as soon as it becomes available.

Program data including available degrees, tuition rates, and details about program coursework were collected from schools' official websites, reflecting data for the 2017-2018 school year. Programmatic accreditation and profit status of schools were collected from official websites of the accreditation agencies or from the National Center for Education Statistics.