Washington Monthly - September/October 2021 - 97

$35,001 and $75,000 per year. The Pell enrollment performance
measure counted for 8.33 percent of the social mobility score.
We measured a college's affordability using data from
IPEDS for the average net prices paid by first-time, full-time,
in-state students with family incomes below $75,000 per year
over the past three years. We focused on these income categories
because of our interest in affordability for students from
lower- to middle-income families. Net price counted for 16.66
percent of the social mobility score.
We replaced two of our measures of financial success due
to changes in the College Scorecard. The first new measure
is the share of students who earned at least 150 percent of
the federal poverty line three years after graduating from college.
This is a proxy for whether students are able to support
themselves financially after graduation. This metric is worth
16.66 percent of the social mobility score. The other financial
success metric is the student loan repayment rate, which is
the percentage of dollars borrowed that is still outstanding
five years after leaving college, with lower rates being better
than higher rates. Rates above 100 percent mean that students
have had more interest accumulate on their loans than
they have been able to repay, while rates below 100 percent
reflect students being able to make a dent in the loan's principal.
We use the raw repayment rate for 8.33 percent of the social
mobility score and a regression-adjusted repayment rate
(using the same predictors as the graduation rate metric) for
another 8.33 percent.
The research score for national universities is based on
five measurements (from the Center for Measuring University
Performance and the National Science Foundation): the total
amount of an institution's research spending; 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 fulltime
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 bachelor's 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 Academies 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 across a range of measures.
We compiled AmeriCorps and Peace Corps data into a combined
metric. We used an indicator for whether a college currently
provides at least some matching funds for undergraduate
students who had received a Segal AmeriCorps Education
Award for having completed national service (two points) and
a standardized measure of the share of students receiving Segal
awards. We divided the number of alumni currently serving
in the Peace Corps by total enrollment, using pre-pandemic
data due to the program's suspension.
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 used the percentage
of federal work-study grant money spent on community
service projects as a measure of how much colleges
prioritize community service; this is based on data provided
by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Each of these three measures was standardized using a threeyear
rolling average.
We added a measure for whether a college received the
Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, with listed
colleges receiving two points. This classification, which is
housed at Albion College, rewards colleges that provide documentation
of their institutional mission and broader public
engagement. We used a measure of voting engagement using
data from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement
(NSLVE) at Tufts University and the ALL IN Campus
Democracy Challenge. Colleges could earn up to six points
for fulfilling each of six criteria. They could receive one point
for being currently enrolled in NSLVE and up to two points for
making their NSLVE survey data publicly available through ALL
IN in 2016 or 2018 (one point for each year). They could receive
up to two points for creating an action plan through the ALL
IN Campus Democracy Challenge in 2018 or 2020 (one point
for each year). A college earned one point for having a student
voter registration rate above 85 percent. Finally, we added
a new measure of the percentage of all degrees awarded
in health, education, and social work to reward colleges that
produce leaders in socially valuable fields that are not always
highly paid.
We compared our rankings to the U.S. Department of
Education's list of colleges subject to the most severe level
of heightened cash monitoring, which indicates that a college
is facing significant financial problems or has other serious
issues that need to be addressed. Four colleges (Bacone
College in Oklahoma, Cheyney University in Pennsylvania,
Southwestern Christian University in Oklahoma, and Wiley
College in Texas) were on that list as of March 2021. We kept
these colleges in our rankings, but denoted them with ^ to
draw this concern to readers' attention. Finally, we checked a
random sample of colleges to see if they had any serious issues
that had been exposed in recent news coverage. No institution
had concerns that rose to the level of us removing
them from our rankings. -Eds.
Washington Monthly 97
Washington Monthly - September/October 2021

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