Aug. 29, 2016
Kevin Carey wrote the introduction to the Washington Monthly's 2016 college ranking issue.
Eleven years ago, the Washington Monthly decided that America needed a different kind of college ranking.
Back then, U.S. News & World Report was the only game in town. Every year, the newsmagazine would rate the nation’s institutions of higher learning on measures of wealth, fame, and exclusivity, then publish the results as a list of “best” colleges.
In response, colleges tried to claw their way up the U.S. News ladder by raising prices and excluding all but the most privileged students—exactly the opposite of what a nation struggling to keep higher education affordable for an increasingly diverse student population actually needed.
So we gathered the best available data and ranked colleges not on what they did for themselves, but on what they did for their country. Our method had three pillars: social mobility, research, and service. Colleges that enrolled many low-income students and helped them graduate did well on our rankings, regardless of how famous they were. So did universities producing the next generation of scientists and PhDs, and those that built an ethos of public obligation by sending graduates into service.