<p>"Seriously, how many people would pass up Columbia to go to Syracuse or Jackson State??? "</p>
<p>I don’t know about Jackson State, but I imagine quite a few would choose Syracuse over Columbia if they were going into broadcast jounalism (Newhouse School) or public policy/affairs (Maxwell School). It also has a avery strong visual and performing arts department that many would consider.</p>
<p>This kind of ranking isn’t meant to be used as a gauge of academic prestige (though “research” may show some correlation) or college brand strength. Rather, it is one attempt to measure which schools contribute most to society. I wouldn’t suggest using it to build a college list. Then again, I wouldn’t suggest using USNews rankings for that purpose either.</p>
<p>Yes, who is to say that this list isn’t valid and useful? Based on the criteria it measures it gives a different perspective on colleges that may be of significant value to applicants who are looking beyond the usual academic “creds” that colleges constantly use to jockey for position in the rankings game.</p>
<p>And, if it bothers some people that the ‘usual suspects’ are not at the top that is too bad…broaden your horizons.</p>
<p>This is just a more socially acceptable list of the kind of lists that include “Biggest Party Schools” or “Schools with the Best-Looking Students.”</p>
<p>I wish they would have done rankings based on the amount of graduates working in their field, instead of the amount of people entering the school with pell grants. And according to this list, 0% of my school’s faculty has received a significant award…you expect me to believe a research institution with 18,000 students doesn’t have any professors with an award.</p>
<p>Pretty bogus to limit this (admittedly flawed) list to universities and not include LACs (some notable leaders in terms of social progressiveness/contributions to society).</p>
<p>1 Berea College (KY)<br>
2 Morehouse College (GA)<br>
3 Bryn Mawr College ¶<br>
4 Spelman College (GA)<br>
5 Swarthmore College ¶<br>
6 Macalester College (MN)<br>
7 Amherst College (MA)<br>
8 Pomona College (CA)<br>
9 Harvey Mudd College (CA)<br>
10 Carleton College (MN)
11 Wesleyan University (CT)
12 Wellesley College (MA)<br>
13 Williams College (MA)<br>
14 Rhodes College (TN)
15 Haverford College ¶<br>
16 Fisk University (TN)<br>
17 Oberlin College (OH)<br>
18 Reed College (OR)<br>
19 Occidental College (CA)
20 Middlebury College (VT)</p>
<p>A little california bias? Berkeley? Come on now. California has been bleeding at the seams for years now with its budgets. I find it hard to believe that they are funding their top schools at the level they once were used to simply because there are too many public colleges in the state. Berkeley has been losing students once they find out that they will be there for 5-6 years. By far, stanford & caltech, ucla & usc are the state’s premier universities. Berkeley is a bit too liberal & if they are turning out economists, it must be of the keynsian brand which has not been working as of late. Here’s my top 50 r&d:
1 stanford 11 unotre dame 21 nyu
2 princeton 12 dartmouth 22 boston c
3 mit 13 case western reserve 23 ucla
4 harvard 14 brown 24 uvirginia
5 yale 15 columbia 25 boston u
6 cal inst 16 cornell 26 cooper union
7 uchicago 17 upenn 27 brandeis
8 johns hopkins 18 rice 28 tufts
9 georgetown 19 vanderbilt 29 carnegie-mellon
10 duke 20 emory 30 umichigan-ann arbor</p>
<p>31 william & mary
32 usc
33 rose hulman inst tech
34 ucal-berkeley
35 u n. Carolina-chapel hill
36 uillinois-urbana champagne
37 umiami
38 penn state-college station
39 uflorida
40 uwisco
41 george tech
42 pepperdine
43 george washington u
44 ucal-davis
45 ucal-irvine
46 rutgers u-new brunswick
47 purdue
48 syracuse
49 upitt
50 depaul</p>
<p>Yes, state funding has been decreasing but that has been made up via increased tuition, philanthropy and federal research funding. It’s a new financial world and Cal has the capability to meet the challenges.</p>
<p>It is mystifying. Dartmouth dropping down-i don’t think so. It’s got engineering, a med school, & business school. Texas schools I find problematic considering surveys on their high schools tend to show students well behind in academics. If student quality measures for anything in a college’s strength-then the best freshmen still come from the northeast, not Texas.</p>
<p>Well, no, that can’t be right. If it were then all the cheap, easy-admit, easy-class schools would be ranked right alongside Jackson State. But those schools are a dime a dozen and most of them don’t make it anywhere near the top of the Washington Monthly ranking. Let’s compare a few:</p>
<p>Broadly similar schools—cheap, low admission standards, presumably all “easy” schools, no rocket science here. And all serve a broadly similar low-income demographic. Yet here’s how they rank in the Washington Monthly social mobility index:</p>
<p>Jackson State #3
North Carolina A&T #87
UTEP #148
Morgan State #157</p>
<p>Why the difference? It’s in the actual grad rate v. predicted grad rate (based on demographics of the student body and in comparison to the average for schools with similar demographics).</p>
<p>School / predicted grad rate / actual grad rate / difference</p>
<p>Jackson State / 27% / 47% / + 20
North Carolina A&T / 33% / 37% / + 4
UTEP / 33% / 32% / -1
Morgan State / 34% / 32% / -2</p>
<p>Again, roughly similar in predicted grad rates, but the other three schools are just doing an average job for their demographic cohort in graduating their students; Jackson State is doing much better. Now you could speculate that Jackson State must be somehow “easier” than the other three schools (and the average for its cohort), but there’s no actual evidence of that. It seems more likely that it is precisely things like mentoring, tutoring, and advising that cause Jackson State to stand out from the crowd. Now I admit I don’t know much about Jackson State, but if you go to their website it describes an impressive array of programs geared to improve the likelihood of academic success. Thing like a mandatory freshman “academic success” course on college survival skills, study skills, test-taking skills, effective writing, reading & speaking skills, library skills, and so on; mandatory diagnostic/placement testing for all entering freshmen to steer them into skills-appropriate courses at the “developmental,” “intermediate,” or “regular” college levels; a heavy emphasis on academic advising; an academic support center offering inter alia peer tutoring in any subject; a battery of advanced academic skills courses; and on and on. It’s easy enough to smugly deride these sorts of programs as “Mickey Mouse” or evidence that the students aren’t doing real college-level work, but for kids coming from economically and academically disadvantaged backgrounds, these kinds of programs can be the difference between building the skills necessary to succeed in real college-level work, or being left to drown. And it seems to be working. A 47% grad rate is still very, very low; but I’ll take that over the 32-37% grad rates you see at comparable schools any day.</p>
<p>In short, I’m convinced there is something to celebrate in a school like Jackson State, a school that is taking a lot of low-income kids and turning many of them into successful engineers, accountants, teachers, and social workers—and even sending some on to medical school or top graduate programs. (Jackson State’s Honors College boasts a 100% success rate in graduate school admissions and placing its graduates in the work force). No doubt some grads are less successful, but at least a school like Jackson State gives them a fighting chance in life.</p>
<p>It’s easy enough for all you academic elitists to sneer at a school like Jackson State, and at any ranking that has it near the top of anything. But look, no one’s mistaking it for Harvard. It’s just that there are other things to valorize and celebrate in our higher education system than which schools can reject the most applicants and rack up the highest median SAT scores. There are other ways to rank schools than by “prestige” and exclusivity. A school like Jackson State that is taking kids from economically and academically challenged backgrounds and giving them a leg up is something to be celebrated, in my book. Personally, I wish some of our institutions with multi-billion dollar endowments would take it upon themselves to do a little more of that, too, but apparently they don’t see it as part of their mission—though they often like to talk about themselves as if it were. But the proof is in the numbers.</p>
<p>^^^Agreed. Also, I think it is easy enough for someone interested in elite colleges to cherry pick them from the results. It’s interesting to know, for example, that a University of Virginia - a public university - has fewer Pell grant recipients than half of NESCAC. Or, that Claremont McKenna, for all of its lip-service to motivating leadership, still comes in dead last, in terms of hours spent in community service (as do almost all the elites.)</p>