In 2016, Rensselaer was listed among the top ten universities for highest median earnings.
Civil liberties organization FIRE gave RPI its 2020 "Lifetime Censorship Award" "For its unashamed, years-long record of censoring its critics and utter disinterest in protecting students’ rights".
=== Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering at RPI ===
One of the major departments at RPI is the ECSE department, or Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering department. The department offers students the ability to gain bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering, or Computer Systems Engineering. While the school itself was founded in 1824, Electrical Engineering was first introduced to Rensselaer Polytechnic in 1907 with the class of 1911, long before the invention of the first computers but twenty-eight years after the invention of the lightbulb. The department was listed as Physics and Electrical Engineering in 1924 while under President Palmer Ricketts. Computer system engineering was added …