Education

N onprofit colleges and universities are represented in Washington by an alphabet soup of organized associations, the most important of which comprise the “Big Six.” The largest and most powerful is the American Council on Education. The other members are the Association of American Universities, an exclusive group of top research institutions that allows new […]

W e settled on two primary goals in 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 […]

W e settled on two primary goals in 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 […]

N ext month, 1,000 of my closest friends and I will begin our senior year at Columbia. We will then enter a year-long panic about our futures. We’ll consider all the usual options. Wannabe lawyers will weigh medium-term futures as law students in Palo Alto or paralegals at Boies, Schiller & Flexner. Anthro and science […]

What the new wave of college-admissions fiction tells us about higher education.

Ranking–College–U.S. News Ranking 1. Bryn Mawr College (PA) – 21 2. Wellesley College (MA) – 4 3. Wesleyan University (CT) – 12 4. Haverford College (PA) – 8 5. Amherst College (MA) – 2 6. Mount Holyoke College (MA) – 23 7. Claremont McKenna College (CA) – 10 8. Williams College (MA) – 1 9. […]

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA) 7 2. University of California, Berkeley* (CA) 20 3. Pennsylvania State University, University Park* (PA) 48 4. University of California, Los Angeles* (CA) 25 5. Texas A&M University* (TX) 60 6. University of California, San Diego* (CA) 32 7. Stanford University (CA) 5 8. Cornell University (NY) 13 9. […]

I magine you’re about to put a chunk of your life savings into a mutual fund. Now imagine you peruse the various “best mutual fund” guides on the news rack, only to find they’re all missing crucial pieces of information. The guides list where the fund managers went to college, how much investment capital they’ve […]

A year ago, we decided we’d had enough of laying into U.S. News & World Report for shortcomings in its college guide. If we were so smart, maybe we should produce a college guide of our own. So we did. (We’re that smart.) We’ve produced a second guide this year–our rankings for national universities and […]

W elcome to The Washington Monthly College Rankings. Unlike other college guides, such as U.S. News and World Report, this guide asks not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country. It’s a guide for all Americans who are concerned about our institutions of higher learning. Are our colleges […]