Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 15

INTRODUCTION:
A DIFFERENT KIND
OF COLLEGE RANKING
America needs a new definition of higher education
excellence, one that measures what colleges do
for their country, instead of for themselves.
By Kevin Carey
A
year ago, the nation was tantalizingly close to making
college tuition-free for millions of students. The
Biden administration's ambitious domestic policy
agenda included a free community college plan that bore a
more-than-passing resemblance to ideas first proposed right
here in the Washington Monthly. America's fragmented and
increasingly unaffordable higher education system would
finally offer a zero-price public option to all.
Sadly, it was not to be. Fifty Republicans and two Democrats
in the U.S. Senate decided to stand athwart progress
and reject the opportunity to improve child care, education,
paid leave, and much more. The community college plan was
among the first items to be jettisoned, in no small part because
the wealthy private universities that dominate the
D.C. higher education lobby conspicuously failed to endorse
it, while also conducting a behind-the-scenes whisper campaign
in Congress letting influential members know they'd
be happy to see it fail.
Not coincidentally, many of those legislative assassins
routinely top the college rankings published annually
by a last-century former newsmagazine that shall remain
unnamed. When your status depends on rejecting as
many applicants as possible while sitting on an enormous
pile of money that accumulates earnings nearly tax-free, you
tend to look down on efforts to redirect attention and public
funding toward colleges that enroll and teach all kinds of
people at a reasonable price.
The resulting harm has been enormous, particularly as
community college students struggle to reengage with their
course work in the wake of devastating pandemic disruptions.
As Jodie Kirshner writes in this issue ( " The Memphis
Post-COVID Community College Blues, " page 35), the combination
of special interest pleading and ideological obstructionism
that doomed the Biden plan came just as two-year
colleges were bleeding enrollment, almost surely widening
the income and educational attainment gaps that are increasingly
pushing society apart.
America needs a different definition of higher education
excellence, one that empowers public institutions at the
expense of elites, instead of the other way around. One that
measures what colleges do for their country, instead of for
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/2022-college-guide
themselves. That's the philosophy behind the Washington
Monthly's annual college rankings. Instead of rating colleges
by wealth, fame, and exclusivity, we prize social mobility,
public service, and research.
The other rankings elevate colleges for keeping low-income
students out. Ours reward them for letting those students
in, and then helping them graduate with degrees that
lead to good jobs, without unmanageable debt. Instead of
reputational surveys that mostly measure the vague and
long-ago, we focus on hard numbers: research expenditures,
faculty awards, and producing graduates who go on to earn
PhDs. Instead of giving colleges credit for how often their
alumni give back to their alma mater, we measure how often
students give to their communities by volunteering, starting
public service careers, and enrolling in the Peace Corps
and ROTC.
The result is a very different hierarchy of the great, the
good, and the not-very-good-at-all. Because we value pubWashington
Monthly 15
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/2022-college-guide
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

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