Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 36

AMERICA'S
WORST COLLEGES
We set out to make a list of the poorestperforming colleges. What we found is that,
while good schools are basically all alike,
every crappy school is crappy in its own way.
By Ben Miller

E

very year, America's media outlets devote gallons
of real and digital ink to parsing America's "best
colleges." As application and acceptance deadlines
near, countless stories, blog posts, and journal entries
appear, following well-off students and documenting
their fears about landing spots in their dream schools.
The market for information about top colleges-

Should a high-studentdebt college with a so-so
graduation rate be ranked
higher or lower than a cheaper
option with minimal debt
but even fewer completers?
The Obama administration
is currently grappling with
exactly these problems as
it works to create a credible
federal college ratings system.
who gets in, who is left out, what happens inside-
seems bottomless.
Yet the truth is that students choosing among selective schools are making largely inconsequential decisions. Whether it's a northeastern private college, a
well-regarded midwestern public institution, or some
36

September/October 2014

other school rich with financial and reputational resources, any option will provide students with what
really matters: overwhelmingly high odds of graduating from a well-recognized college. For them, even the
dreaded "safety school" is likely still a better option than
the best choice available to large numbers of students.
Less-fortunate students, by contrast, are often
forced to choose among the many colleges that get
lumped into broad lower tiers on best colleges lists,
or from private for-profit colleges that are not even
ranked at all. Many of these colleges are dropout factories, where students are unlikely to graduate and prices, debt levels, and student loan default rates are high.
For these students, the crucial question is where not to
go to college. When you're wandering through a minefield with destructive options that lead to high loan
debt and no degree, it's worth having a map.
Yet the newsstands don't sell guides to America's worst colleges. Nobody writes stories about high
school seniors beset with anxiety about whether to attend a community college with a rock-bottom graduation rate, a nearby private college with shaky finances,
or a shady for-profit institution. The few rankings that
even broach the subject tend to be either mildly humorous attempts from a decade ago ("Worst Trust-FundBaby College") or ones that turn upside-down a list that
started out as another best colleges exercise.
Worst colleges lists are uncommon in part because
they represent a more difficult analytic challenge. The
indicators that put a college on the top lists tend to be
highly correlated at the top end. A school that takes
one out of every ten applicants and sits on a billiondollar endowment is very likely to have low class sizes,
high SAT scores, and high graduation rates. The rich
tend to be rich all around.
Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

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