Washington Monthly magazine came out with its own college rankings today, naming the nation’s “best’’ colleges from a very different vantage point from that of U.S. News and World Report.
The Washington Monthly ratings try to measure which colleges do the most for the social good, by improving social mobility, producing research and promoting service.
The magazine’s College Guide Web site, looks at different indicators than most other ranking systems: the percentage of students getting Pell grants and their graduation rates, the institution’s research spending, its record of B.A. recipients going on to get Ph.D’s or going into the Peace Corps or R.O.T.C., and what percentage of federal work-study funds the institution spends on service.
By those lights, the top three universities in the nation are all part of the University of California system: Berkeley, San Diego and U.C.L.A. Thirteen of the top 20 national universities are public, while Harvard comes in at number 11, Yale at 23 and Princeton at 28. (In the U.S. News rankings, none of the top 20 national universities are public.)
Among the liberal arts colleges, most of the top 10 — Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Williams, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Carleton and Wellesley — are among the leading colleges in the U.S. News lists, too.
Women’s colleges are standouts by the Washington Monthly criteria, with four among the top 10. And historically black institutions do far better than they do on the U.S. News rankings.
The U.S. News & World Report rankings, the leader in the field and the one everyone loves to hate, are probably the best measure of a university’s prestige — so much so that some college presidents earn bonuses for getting their school to rise on the lists.
The U.S. News rankings have been widely criticized for giving greatest weight to a peer-assessment survey. And the critiques heated up after this spring’s revelations that Clemson University’s president rated his own university the best in the nation, ahead of the Ivies, and the University of Florida’s president rated his own as equal to the Ivies, and far better than all the state’s other institutions.
At a time when higher education is getting unprecedented attention — and tuition is reaching unprecedented heights — college rankings have become a growth industry, both in the United States and around the world. Each ranking system uses different criteria.
Forbes introduced its rankings last year, taking into account such factors as alumni listings in Who’s Who, and student evaluations of professors on Ratemyprofessors.com.
With the rapid globalization of higher education, the international rankings by the United Kingdom’s Times Higher Education and China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University now attract a wide following.
The Washington Monthly rankings, looking at the indicators of colleges’ social utility, are a different kind of effort, and an interesting one.
What would the world be like if college presidents worked as hard to improve their Washington Monthly rankings as they now do to keep up their U.S. News ranking?
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