The Editors

A guest post by Tom Toch I’ve spent the last week reflecting on an extraordinary event I attended Feb 12-13-Teach for America’s 20th Anniversary Summit at the Washington Convention Center. Nearly 11,000 past and present TFA “corps members,” funders, and policymakers from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to DC Mayor Vincent Gray turned the convention […]

Overall score: Overall score represents the combined score of our three metrics—social mobility, research, and service—where the highest is 100 and the lowest is zero. Each metric is weighted equally. Social mobility: The first column shows the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants. The second shows the predicted rate of graduation, based on incoming SAT […]

There are two primary goals to our methodology. First, we considered no single category to be more important than any other. Second, the final rankings needed to reflect excellence across the full breadth of our measures, rather than reward an exceptionally high focus on, say, research. Thus, all three main categories were weighted equally when […]

The Washington Monthly ranking of America’s best community colleges is based on two sources of information: the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and graduation rates published by the U.S. Department of Education. The CCSSE survey is managed by a nonprofit organization of the same name housed at the University of Texas at Austin. […]

It wasn’t long ago that the colleges annually anointed as “America’s Best” by U.S. News & World Report— Harvard, Princeton, and Yale—served as fertile breeding grounds for future masters of the financial universe. History majors from New Haven could make the hour-long drive along the Long Island Sound to the hedge funds of Greenwich, Connecticut. […]

Overall score: Overall score represents the combined score of our three metrics—social mobility, research, and service—where the highest is 100 and the lowest is zero. Each individual metric is worth 33 1/3 total points. Social mobility: The first column shows the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants. The second shows the predicted rate of graduation, […]

Introduction: A Different Kind of College Ranking by the Editors Editor’s Note by Paul Glastris College for $99 a Month The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities. by Kevin Carey Pie in the Sky What happened when a billionaire pizza mogul tried to build an elite Catholic law […]

There are two primary goals to our methodology. First, we considered no single category to be more important than any other. Second, the final rankings needed to reflect excellence across the full breadth of our measures, rather than reward an exceptionally high focus on, say, research. All categories were weighted equally when calculating the final […]

In the space of a little more than a week this past June, two university presidents revealed just how cynical they’re willing to be. First, Clemson University President James F. Barker admitted to rating Clemson as the single greatest university in America—better than Harvard, Yale, or any other—when he filled out the reputational survey that […]