Wagner College is a private institution that was founded in 1883. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,821, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 110 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Wagner College's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), 24.

Wagner received the name it bears today shortly after its founding. When John G. Wagner gave $12,000 to the school so that it could purchase a new campus, the grateful board of trustees renamed the school in memory of their benefactor’s son, George Wagner, who had died before realizing his own ambition to become a minister.