Kent State has been ranked 17th globally by the Business of Fashion for undergraduate fashion programs.

This is the second year Kent State has made it onto the list of 50 schools, moving up two spots from its position in the 2016 rankings.

Kent State is also ranked first in the Midwest, and second in public institutions in the U.S. by fashion-schools.org.

The Business of Fashion measures global influence, learning quality and long-term value as major indicators of quality. Students and alumni are surveyed to create an analysis, along with feedback from fashion professionals.

“There’s no sort of standard for what is a good fashion school,” said J.R. Campbell, director of the fashion school. “[The Business of Fashion ranking] does the best job at looking at the whole world and the categories that, I think, it includes make sense.”

Campbell said it can be be difficult to quantify those categories into numbers, especially when you take into account the differences between private and public universities or the how education systems differ between countries.

“It helps people to start to think about the broader picture of fashion education and the big differences,” Campbell said.

Many of the schools listed are art and design or fashion focused institutions or located in a major city, unlike Kent State, but Campbell said the ranking shows that the school is heading in the right direction.

“Even when the Business of Fashion team added 25 new institutions to their list this year,” Campbell said. “We still went up.”

Ella Abbott is the fashion reporter. Contact her at [email protected].