Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 23

INTRODUCTION:

A DIFFERENT KIND
OF COLLEGE RANKING
By Grace Gedye and Paul Glastris

I

t's safe to say that the current generation of college
students is getting an education unlike any other in
American history. They spent the spring and summer
in pandemic-induced disruption, isolation, and stress,
with vanished jobs and internships, taking hastily arranged online classes, and, in most cases, paying the same
tuition that they would have if they had been on campus.
Now, as students are beginning their fall semester,
the virus is still not under control. Most have been offered the option of continuing to take online classes while
being urged, and in some cases all but forced, to move
back on campus and attend in-person classes by colleges
that need the dorm revenue-a vast socio-epidemiological experiment that will likely be abandoned amid sickness and unnecessary death. Those attending poorly resourced state schools-disproportionately minority and
low-income students-probably aren't even getting the
benefit of the weekly or daily virus testing that elite private schools are providing.
Current college students have also gotten a realworld education in the power of political activism. This
summer, in the wake of George Floyd's killing, large numbers of them took to the streets in support of Black Lives
Matter. In November, these same students will have a
chance to vote in a national election, many for the first
time. It will, to say the least, be no ordinary election-
especially for young people, who, by definition, will have to
live with the consequences longer than older Americans.
These searing generational experiences are likely to
have long-term consequences none of us can predict. But
it is a good bet that in the short term they will lead today's
college students to demand fundamental change from the
institutions they experience most directly: the colleges
and universities they attend. 
What might they demand? Well, for starters, they are
going to want to see schools make a greater effort to do
right by students who are Black, Latino, and Native American, or who come from low-income backgrounds. They
are going to want to see colleges double down on their ef-

forts to produce the research and technologies that will
create the new high-paying jobs they will need to sustain
themselves, as well as the solutions to climate change and
other existential threats. And they are going to want their
institutions not just to tolerate their civic activism but to
sincerely encourage it.
What today's students could use is a reliable tool to
gauge how well their colleges measure up on these demands.
As it happens, there is one. The Washington Monthly's
annual college guide ranks individual schools based on
how well they promote upward mobility, research, and
civic engagement. These criteria are quite different from
those employed by U.S. News & World Report, which ranks
For more on our rankings and the latest in
higher education reform news, go to the
College Guide section of our website, at
washingtonmonthly.com/2020-college-guide

schools based on their wealth, exclusivity, and prestige.
The resulting lists of best colleges are, naturally, quite different too, and those differences reveal a great deal about
what is right and wrong with the American higher education system.

T

he first thing to note about our top 20 national universities is that 11 of them are state schools. By contrast, in the U.S. News rankings, 19 of the top 20 national universities are elite private ones. The public universities on our list range from prestigious flagships like
UCLA-the only public university in U.S. News's top 20-
to institutions that don't even crack U.S. News's top 50-
including the University of Washington, Texas A&M, and
Utah State University. In fact, Utah State, number 10 on
our list, ranks number 254 on U.S. News's.
You might also notice that a number of the elite private national universities that score in U.S. News's top 20
do less well on ours-including Northwestern (number 30
Washington Monthly  23
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/2020-college-guide
Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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