Washington Monthly - September/October 2016 - 115

performance and 6.67 percent for first-generation performance. We measured a college's affordability by using data from IPEDS on the average net prices paid by firsttime, full-time, in-state students with family incomes below 75,000 per year over the last three years. We focused on these income categories due to our interest in affordability for students from lower- to middle-income families. Net price counted for 20 percent of the social mobility score. We have wanted to include more data on students' economic outcomes for years, and now the College Scorecard provides us with that opportunity. The first metric we used compares the median earnings of a college's former students (graduates and dropouts alike) ten years after initial enrollment to predicted earnings based on the variables used to predict graduation rates, as well as two other factors designed to take colleges' missions and locations into account. We adjusted for a college's mix of bachelor's degrees awarded, using STEM, education, business, health, social science, and liberal arts as broad degree categories. We also adjusted for regional living costs using fair market rent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to account for the fact that 40,000 per year in the rural South goes much farther than 40,000 per year in the Washington metropolitan area. This metric is worth 20 percent of the social mobility score. The other new metric is a student loan repayment rate, reflecting the percentage of students who paid down at least 1 in principal within five years of leaving college and entering repayment. We had previously used data on the percentage of students defaulting on their loans within three years of entering repayment, but the repayment rate is a far better measure of students' economic circumstances. We use the raw repayment rate for 10 percent of the social mobility score and a regressionadjusted repayment rate (using the same predictors as the graduation rate metric) for another 10 percent. The research score for national universities is based on five measurements: the total amount of an institution's research spending (from the Center for Measuring University Performance and the National Science Foundation); the number of science and engineering PhDs awarded by the university; the number of undergraduate alumni who have gone on to receive a PhD in any subject, relative to the size of the college; the number of faculty receiving prestigious awards, relative to the number of full-time faculty; and the number of faculty in the National Academies, relative to the number of full-time faculty. For national universities, we weighted each of these components equally to determine a college's final score in the category. For liberal arts colleges, master's universities, and baccalaureate colleges, which do not have extensive doctoral programs, science and engineering PhDs were excluded and we gave double weight to the number of alumni who go on to get PhDs. Faculty awards and National Academy membership were not included in the research score for these institutions because such data is available for only a relative handful of these colleges. We determined the community service score by measuring each college's performance in four equally weighted measures. We judged military service by collecting data on the size of each college's Air Force, Army, and Navy ROTC programs and dividing by the number of students. We similarly measured national service by dividing the number of alumni currently serving in the Peace Corps by total enrollment. The final two measures are based on data reported to the Corporation for National and Community Service by colleges and universities in their applications for the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. One measure is the percentage of federal work-study grant money spent on community service projects. The second measure is more complicated and includes the percent of students doing community service, the number of hours of community service per student, whether any staﬀ were employed in community service, if any service courses were oﬀered, or if the institution provides scholarships for community service. Colleges that did not submit applications in a given year had no data and were given zeros on these measures. (Our advice to those colleges: If you care about service, believe you do a good job of promoting it, and want the world to know, then fill out the application!) -Eds. Serving is How We Learn 100% of our students engage in service learning or volunteerism, from building houses to tutoring kids to maintaining community gardens. www.redlands.edu/serve Washington Monthly 115 http://www.redlands.edu/serve http://www.redlands.edu/serve

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2016