by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege Factual recognizes the best colleges and universities in its annual rankings. These rankings include categories for best overall colleges, best colleges for each major, best value schools, and much more.
Cumberland University was awarded 21 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is liberal arts / sciences & humanities.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
CU landed the #1,255 spot in College Factual's 2025 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,152 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This is an improvement over the previous year, when CU held the #1,701 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
CU also holds the #20 spot on the Best Colleges in Tennessee ranking.
The acceptance rate at Cumberland University is a competitive 66%, so make sure you take your application seriously when putting it together. Even leaving out a minor detail could be a reason to move you to the rejection pile.
The student to faculty ratio is often used to estimate how much interaction there is between professors and their students at a college or university. At Cumberland University, this ratio is 16 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.
In addition to the student to faculty ratio, some people look at what percentage of faculty members are full-time as a sign of how much time professors will be able to spend with their students. This is because part-time teachers may not be be on campus as much as their full-time counterparts.
The full-time faculty percentage at Cumberland University is 44%. This is comparable to the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate is a sign of how many full-time students like a college or university well enough to come back for their sophomore year. At Cumberland University this rate is 59%, which is a bit lower than the national average of 68%.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At CU the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 40%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Cumberland University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 2,397 undergraduates at CU with 1,886 being full-time and 511 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $18,531 | $18,213 | $18,561 | $21,672 | $21,741 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of CU, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
Almost 66% of college students who graduated with the class of 2018 took out student loans, but that percentage varies from school to school. At CU, approximately 19% of students took out student loans averaging $6,896 a year. That adds up to $27,584 over four years for those students.
See which majors at Cumberland University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Cumberland University.
Contact details for CU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1 Cumberland Square, Lebanon, TN 37087 |
| Phone: | 615-444-2562 |
| Website: | www.cumberland.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Liberal Arts General Studies | 136 | $23,264 |
| Business Administration & Management | 105 | $35,538 |
| Nursing | 78 | $67,094 |
| General Business/Commerce | 64 | NA |
| Health & Physical Education | 46 | NA |
| Criminal Justice & Corrections | 31 | $45,223 |
| General Education | 25 | NA |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 22 | NA |
| Public Administration | 19 | NA |
| Biological & Biomedical Sciences (Other) | 14 | NA |
Online learning options are becoming more and more popular at American colleges and universities. Online classes are great for students who have busy schedules or for those who just want to study on their own time.
In 2022-2023, 73 students took at least one online class at Cumberland University. This is an increase from the 39 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 73 | 73 |
| 2021-2022 | 39 | 39 |
| 2020-2021 | 53 | 53 |
| 2018-2019 | 46 | 46 |
If you’re considering Cumberland University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against CU? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.