The Foreign Service Journal, December 2011

104 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT W HAT ’ S IN A C OLLEGE R ANKING ? W ITH ITS UNIQUE APPROACH TO COLLEGE RANKINGS , W ASHINGTON M ONTHLY POINTS TO A NEW FAULT LINE IN A MERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION . B Y L AURA P ETTINELLI AND S USAN M AITRA eyond the typical college rankings of U.S. News &World Report , Princeton Review , and Newsweek is a lesser-known yet inno- vative ranking system: that of Washington Monthly magazine (www.washingto n monthly.com ). Its online College Guide includes research articles and blogs on education in addition to lists of the top 100 liberal arts colleges and the top 100 national universities, as well as rankings of master’s universi- ties and baccalaureate colleges. Washington Monthly asks not what a school can do for its students, but what the school does for the country. The rationale is that higher education should benefit the com- munity by driving economic growth and technological development, creating social mobility though education, and providing the upcoming working force with a solid aca- demic grounding. To serve this purpose, a school must not only maintain a quality curriculum that is relevant and admit significant numbers of disadvantaged students. It must ensure that they all graduate. And here, WM has found, surprisingly large numbers of institutions fail. A Different Approach While the big-name schools such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Columbia top the list of U.S. News & World Report , Washington Monthly ’s College Guide tells a vastly different story. There three University of California schools, Stanford, Case Western and Jackson State University are at the top of the list, and Yale ranks just 39th. Jackson State didn’t even make the U.S. News ratings, and Case Western was ranked number 38. Notably, Stanford makes the top five of both lists. Public universities have historically topped the WM list, with the University of California schools taking four out of the five top positions on the national university list (in spite of the sharp rise in tuition prompted by the state’s budget crisis). By contrast, the public option is usually absent or low on the traditional rankings of U.S. News & World Report , Princeton Review and Newsweek . WM also highlights liberal arts colleges that offer great education, yet are often overlooked in the high school col- lege search and consigned to the U.S. News “third tier.” For instance, Morehouse College ranked number one this year on the WM liberal arts colleges list, in part due to the fact that it enrolls a large number of low-income men and main- tains a high graduation rate. Yet Morehouse was ranked 127 on the U.S. News liberal arts colleges list. Among the important factors that WM considers when determining rankings are: the number of Pell Grant recipi- ents admitted, the level of student participation in commu- nity service, the amount an institution spends on research— and, the graduation rate. Graduation Rates A school’s graduation rate, often a good overall indicator of both the quality of a school’s educators and its quality of life, is a key factor in Washington Monthly ’s evaluation. An institution that enrolls large numbers of low-income stu- dents but only graduates a small fraction of them is of little help to the community — or worse. In a series of thought-provoking articles on “College Dropout Factories,” the magazine took aim at this problem, which is startlingly pervasive yet mostly unacknowledged. “The American higher education system shunts striving low- income students into a class of schools invisible to the elite,” write Ben Miller and Phuong Ly. “The only thing these schools do well is drive their students to quit.” Millions of disadvantaged students continue to have their dreams of college education shattered by these institutions. The articles are based on a study by Washington Monthly and Education Sector, an independent think-tank, in which researchers looked at the 15 percent of colleges and univer- sities with the worst graduation records — about 200 schools in all — and found that the average graduation rate at these schools is 26 percent. The worst, Southern University at New Orleans, graduates a mere 5 percent of its students. While these schools accept pretty much anyone who applies, they do not maintain their responsibility to the stu- Laura Pettinelli is the Journal ’s editorial intern. Susan Maitra is senior editor. B