September 29, 2005 | Read Time: 1 minute
With the release of its first annual college rankings this month, the Washington Monthly joined the list of magazines and guidebooks that rate institutions of higher education. But “while other guides ask what colleges can do for students,” the magazine says, “we ask what colleges are doing for the country.”
The Washington Monthly editors came up with three main criteria for determining what America needs from its universities: social mobility, academic minds and research that advance knowledge and help expand the economy, and an ethic of service.
Given those measurements, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology topped the rankings, followed by two public institutions, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley.
Many of Washington Monthly’s leading institutions earned their spots for other than the predictable reasons. MIT’s commitment to community service did more to lift its rating than did the university’s research, while UCLA earned top marks in the magazine’s social-mobility category because of the university’s high graduation rate relative to its large enrollment of low-income students.
The article is available online at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com.
