Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 24

ing from both the state and the city, with at least 35 percent
of their students receiving Pell Grants, a graduation rate of
about 55 percent, and an average net price of about $5,000
for low- to middle-income students. These are the types of
colleges that the U.S. News & World Report tends to relegate
to its lower tiers, but they are a great value for students who
can gain admission.
The next thing you'll notice is the dominance of public schools. They take eighteen of the top twenty spots, and
include such well-known names as the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill, Texas A&M, and the University of
Washington, alongside lesser-known schools like Murray
State University in Kentucky and Wayne State University in
Nebraska. These institutions tend to be in states that have
historically been unusually committed to building affordable
higher education systems. Some, like New York, have resisted the "disinvestment" trend we hear so much about. Others,
like California and North Carolina, have pulled money out,
but they were so cheap to begin with that they're still, relatively speaking, inexpensive.
While all of the colleges on the list do a good job of serving a broad swath of the population, there are large differences in the price that students and their families should expect to pay. One year at the three CUNY colleges at the top
of our list costs about $5,000 per year, compared to just over
$25,000 per year at nearby Fordham University. It may be the

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September/October 2014

case that Fordham students get a better education and make
more money after graduation than CUNY students, offsetting the difference in price, but that cannot be determined
given available data.
It's worth pointing out-and giving kudos to-the
relative handful of private institutions, including Amherst
College and Brigham Young University-Idaho, that made
the list. These schools go out of their way to recruit lessaffluent students and keep the prices they charge to those
students down.
It's also worth noting some of the big-name public
flagships, like the University of Virginia and the University
of Michigan-Ann Arbor, that aren't on the list. That's because
they don't admit enough Pell-eligible students, which is another way of saying that they don't reflect the demographics of their own states. These "public private" flagships, as
well as some of the Ivies, do better on our "Affordable Elite"
rankings (page 32), mostly because that list is restricted to,
well, the elite schools. But if institutions like Amherst and
the University of Washington can make our Best Bang for
the Buck list, there's no reason UVA and Harvard couldn't
too, if they tried.
Robert Kelchen is an assistant professor of higher education in the
Department of Education Leadership, Management and Policy at
Seton Hall University.
http://WWW.GOSHEN.EDU
Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

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