William and Mary top college in Virginia, according to Washington Monthly
Monday, August 7th, 2006As I mentioned in a blog last week, the season of college rankings is upon us. One of the non-traditional ranking publications, Washington Monthly, came out with their second annual rankings today.
In addition to rankings, the site also has some interesting articles about efforts to measure how well students actually learn along with unflinching criticism for colleges that refuse to release this information and U.S. News and World Report for basing their rankings on what Washington Monthly editors see as faulty criteria.
Instead of measuring SAT scores and alumni giving, Washington Monthly based rankings on three criteria: How colleges serve as an engine for social mobility, how they foster scientific and humanistic research and how they promote service to country.
So schools that do a lot of research to improve people's lives, schools that enroll a lot of Pell Grant recipients (which translates to low-income students) and schools that send a lot of students to the Peace Corps or the military (VMI, Virginia Tech) are given priority over schools with pristine academic reputations and a wealthy student body (Princeton ranks 43rd on this list).
So how did Virginia schools fare?