Missouri University of Science and Technology
300 W 13th St, Rolla, MO
Last updated
Koko Score: not enough votes yet
Missouri University of Science and Technology, founded in 1870 as the Missouri School of Mines, has built one of the strongest engineering-focused academic reputations in the Midwest, with a curriculum still concentrated almost entirely on engineering, computing, and the physical sciences. The university's mining engineering, petroleum engineering, and explosives engineering programs reflect its founding roots in resource extraction education, and Missouri S&T remains one of the few American universities offering an accredited explosives engineering degree, a genuinely rare academic specialty. The campus's Stonehenge replica, built by students and faculty in the engineering program using laser-cutting techniques to demonstrate precision stonework, has become one of the university's most distinctive physical landmarks and a symbol of its engineering-focused institutional culture. Missouri S&T's relatively small size and its narrow, deeply technical curriculum have made it a consistent draw specifically for students certain they want an engineering-focused education, occupying a niche within Missouri's public university system similar to what Colorado School of Mines or Georgia Tech represent in their own states.
Own this business? Log in to claim this listing.
Appears on
- Top 6 Colleges in Missouri
Currently #5 · score 0
Reviews
Log in to leave a review.
Barks
Log in to bark.
Similar places
- Washington University in St. LouisBattleCompare
Washington University in St. Louis, founded in 1853 and named for George Washington, is consistently ranked among the top research universities in the country, and its Olin Business School and School of Medicine have each built reputations rivaling far more nationally famous private universities. The university's endowment per student ranks among the highest of any American research university, funding substantial financial aid and research infrastructure that's let WashU compete directly with Ivy League and other elite private universities for top faculty and applicants despite being less broadly known outside academic circles. WashU's medical school and its affiliated Barnes-Jewish Hospital form one of the largest academic medical research complexes in the country, and the university's biomedical research funding regularly ranks among the top handful of American universities, reflecting a research strength that WashU has built with less mainstream public name recognition than its academic standing would suggest. The university's architecturally uniform, Collegiate Gothic campus, built largely from local Missouri limestone, gives Washington University one of the more visually distinctive private research university campuses in the Midwest, and its combination of genuine Ivy League-caliber academics with a somewhat lower public profile has made it a frequently cited example of an "underrated" elite American university.
- University of MissouriBattleCompare
The University of Missouri, founded in 1839, was the first public university established west of the Mississippi River, and its School of Journalism, founded in 1908, was the first dedicated journalism school in the world, giving Mizzou a founding claim to journalism education predating every other program globally. The university's veterinary medicine and agricultural programs have built strong national reputations, reflecting Missouri's land-grant institutional mission, and Mizzou's research reactor, one of the most powerful university-based nuclear research reactors in the country, supports significant work in nuclear medicine and materials science research. Mizzou's Columbia campus sits roughly midway between St. Louis and Kansas City, and the university's flagship status within Missouri's public university system has made it the state's primary producer of professionals across law, medicine, journalism, and agriculture for more than 180 years. The university's journalism program's continued national reputation, built on its founding claim as the world's first, combined with its broader land-grant research mission across agriculture and veterinary medicine, has given Mizzou a distinctive academic identity that's shaped Missouri's professional workforce for generations.
- Saint Louis UniversityBattleCompare
Saint Louis University, founded in 1818 by the Catholic Church and later placed under Jesuit administration, is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River, and its downtown St. Louis campus gives students direct access to the city's business, legal, and healthcare industries. The university's medical school and its affiliated hospital system have built strong regional reputations, and SLU's public health program, along with its law school, have each become significant draws for students seeking professional training within a mid-sized Catholic research university setting. SLU's Center for International Studies and its considerable Jesuit institutional network, connecting it to other Jesuit universities worldwide, reflect the university's continued emphasis on global engagement and service alongside its explicitly Catholic educational mission. The university's combination of genuine research-university breadth across medicine, law, and public health, along with its Jesuit mission and downtown St. Louis location, has made SLU one of the most academically comprehensive Catholic universities in the Midwest.
- Truman State UniversityBattleCompare
Truman State University, founded in 1867 as a teacher-training institution, has served since 1985 as Missouri's designated statewide public liberal arts and sciences university, a formal legislative mission unusual among American public universities, most of which don't hold such a specifically defined statewide role. The university's undergraduate research opportunities and its unusually rigorous admissions standards relative to typical regional public universities have earned Truman State a reputation as one of the best academic values among public universities in the Midwest, consistently ranking near the top of "best value" public university surveys. Truman State's small size, around 5,000 students, and its designation as the state's sole liberal-arts-focused public institution give it a distinct academic identity relative to Missouri's larger, more comprehensive public research universities like Mizzou. The university's Kirksville, Missouri campus and its combination of selective admissions, small class sizes, and public in-state tuition have made Truman State a consistent draw for academically strong Missouri students seeking a rigorous liberal arts education without private-college tuition costs.
- Westminster CollegeBattleCompare
Westminster College, founded in 1851, is best known as the site of Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech, delivered at the college's invitation and formally titled "The Sinews of Peace," a speech now widely regarded as one of the defining rhetorical moments marking the beginning of the Cold War. The college's America's National Churchill Museum, built on campus and incorporating a historic bombed-out London church relocated stone by stone from England, commemorates that speech and Churchill's broader legacy, giving the small college a level of historical significance disproportionate to its size. Westminster's small enrollment, fewer than 1,000 students, and its Fulton, Missouri campus give it an intimate liberal arts college experience, and the school's international relations and political science programs draw directly on the institutional prestige tied to its Churchill connection. The college's continued annual programming and scholarship connected to Churchill's speech, including hosting subsequent major political figures for related addresses over the decades since, has made Westminster a distinctive small liberal arts college with a specific, internationally recognized historical claim to fame.
More in Colleges
- edX
edX was founded in 2012 as a joint nonprofit venture between Harvard University and MIT, launched specifically to offer free access to real university-level courses from elite institutions, directly following the same MOOC wave that produced Coursera the same year. The platform's nonprofit, open-source origins distinguished it from venture-backed for-profit competitors, and edX's underlying Open edX software platform was made freely available for other institutions and organizations to build their own independent online course offerings. edX was acquired in 2021 by the for-profit online education company 2U for $800 million, a transaction that marked a significant shift for a platform that had spent its first decade explicitly organized as a nonprofit mission-driven initiative between two of the world's most prestigious universities. edX's combination of its founding as a nonprofit Harvard-MIT partnership and its later acquisition by a for-profit education company has made it one of the most institutionally significant online learning platforms in the MOOC movement's history.
- Udemy
Udemy was founded in 2010, built around an open marketplace model letting virtually any individual instructor create and sell their own online course on any subject, a significantly more open and decentralized approach than platforms built around institutional university partnerships. The platform's marketplace structure, with instructors setting their own course content and often competing directly with other instructors teaching similar subjects, created an unusually large and varied course catalog spanning technical skills, business topics, and countless niche hobbyist subjects. Udemy's frequent deep-discount pricing promotions, regularly offering courses normally priced much higher for a small fraction of that cost, became a well-known and sometimes criticized part of the platform's sales strategy, reflecting the competitive economics of its open instructor marketplace. Udemy's combination of its open marketplace model for independent instructors and its massive, wide-ranging course catalog has made it one of the largest online learning platforms by total course volume in the industry.
- MasterClass
MasterClass was founded in 2015 by David Rogier, built around a genuinely novel premise for online education: rather than academic instructors, the platform recruits world-renowned experts and celebrities, including chefs, athletes, and artists, to teach polished, cinematically produced courses in their specific fields of mastery. The platform's production values, using film-quality cinematography and editing rather than typical webcam-style online course recording, positioned MasterClass as much as premium entertainment content as traditional education, blurring the line between the two categories. MasterClass's roster of instructors, including figures like Gordon Ramsay teaching cooking and Serena Williams teaching tennis, relies heavily on the specific celebrity and expertise of each instructor as the platform's core value proposition, a different model than platforms built around institutional academic credibility. MasterClass's combination of its celebrity-instructor business model and its unusually high cinematic production values has made it one of the most distinctive online learning platforms in the industry.
- Duolingo
Duolingo was founded in 2011 by Carnegie Mellon professor Luis von Ahn and his graduate student Severin Hacker, built around a free, gamified approach to language learning using short daily lessons, points, and streaks to encourage consistent practice habits. Von Ahn, who had previously co-created reCAPTCHA, brought a similar interest in crowdsourced technology to Duolingo's original business model, which for a time relied partly on having users translate real documents and web content as a byproduct of their language practice exercises. Duolingo's owl mascot, Duo, became known for its aggressively persistent notification style, reminding users to complete their daily lessons, a marketing approach that became a genuine internet meme and a widely recognized piece of the app's brand identity. Duolingo's combination of its gamified, streak-based approach to habit formation and its widely memed mascot-driven engagement strategy has made it one of the most downloaded and culturally recognized education apps ever created.
- Coursera
Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, building on the massive open online course (MOOC) format that had generated significant attention after Stanford's own free online AI course drew over 100,000 enrolled students the previous year. The platform's partnership model, hosting courses created by actual professors from major universities including Stanford, Yale, and the University of Michigan, gave it a level of institutional academic credibility that distinguished it from platforms built around independent instructors. Coursera's evolution to offer full online degree programs and professional certificates from major employers including Google and IBM reflected a broader shift in how the platform positioned itself, moving from free enrichment courses toward credentialed programs with direct career and educational value. Coursera's combination of its origins in Stanford's pioneering MOOC experiments and its evolution into a platform offering full accredited degrees has made it one of the most academically significant online learning platforms in the industry.
