On a September morning, it’s easy to feel the energy as you walk by Temple University‘s main campus on North Broad Street. As they moved around the 406-acre urban campus, students were busy in a way that only comes from having somewhere to be. It doesn’t feel like half of the place is empty. It’s not like a school that’s having trouble getting people to sit down. As of fall 2024, 21,428 undergraduates were enrolled at Temple. This means that the school is doing something right, though it’s not clear what it is.
Temple University has been around since 1884, and in that time it has tried to be the best option for students who want to go to college but don’t want to pay the high cost of a private school. The numbers make that balancing act very clear. When you live in the state, tuition is $23,723. This isn’t a cheap price by any means, but it is a big drop from what many similar schools charge. 65% of first-year students get financial aid based on their need, which tells you something about the people Temple is really helping. These aren’t mostly wealthy families who use Temple as a backup. A lot of the students here are careful with their money.
The ratio of students to teachers at this school is 12:1, which is about average for a public school this size. 44% of classes have less than 20 students, which is something that is often missed when people talk about how anonymous big state schools are. Temple seems to have worked hard to keep the classroom experience manageable, even while keeping the number of students high enough to keep the school’s doors open. It’s still not clear if that balance will stay the same as enrollment pressures change across the country.
From 2026 to 2027, U.S. News ranks Temple as the 102nd best national university and the 49th best public school. That’s a good spot—right in the middle of the pack for a school whose acceptance rate is 80%. Take a moment to think about what that acceptance rate really means. Temple doesn’t pick students based on their SAT scores or GPA, but the students who do get in have average high school grades of 3.4 and SAT scores between 1180 and 1390. The school doesn’t match. Most of the time, the students who come here can do the work.
The five-year graduation rate of 59% is harder to ignore. It’s important to ask why more than four out of ten students who start don’t finish within four years. Some of them move on to other schools. Some take five years. Some people leave for good. The reasons are almost always personal, financial, or structural; they are rarely academic on their own. Because Temple is in the city, its students often have responsibilities outside of class that traditional college students who live on campus don’t have. When you read a graduation rate as a single number, that background information is important.
Temple graduates are making an average of $50,860 a year six years after they graduated. Starting salaries for people with degrees in computer science are around $104,000. Not far behind are engineering graduates. The picture is very different by major, but the overall trend isn’t bad. Temple isn’t a school where your degree goes away for good.
There’s something honest about Temple that stands for in American higher education. It’s not trying to be as fancy as Penn across the street. A lot of students from North Broad Street are being helped to find stable jobs in a city that still has room to grow. Based on the number of enrollments, it looks like pitch is still landing. That’s where the real story is still being written: whether the school can close the gap in graduation rates while keeping costs low.
