College rankings that actually mean something
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The media outlet Washington Monthly has now issued several new college rankings that look at academia from a much more practical viewpoint from most other rankings, and as a result many of the bankrupt Ivy League universities that normally get ranked high on other lists because of their prestigious but overblown reputations are beaten out by many lesser known colleges.
The rankings to the right comes from the “Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars” list.
Not surprisingly, when you stop rating colleges by their snob appeal, lesser-known institutions get a chance to shine. You can see that in the adjacent chart, which shows the highest-scoring 30 schools on the Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars list. The prestigious and world-famous universities that dominate the top of the U.S. News ranking make up less than half of this list. The rest are unheralded, mostly public institutions, many of which outrank the elite ones.
The University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley (number four) lands 16 slots above Yale University (number 20). Western Governors University (number 13) is four positions above Brown University (number 17). The City University of New York’s Hunter College (number 15) sits seven places above Vanderbilt University (number 22). Several schools that perpetually vie for first place on the U.S. News national universities ranking (Stanford, Columbia, and Dartmouth) don’t crack our top 30. Meanwhile, six campuses from the California State University system do. And the highest-ranking elite university, Duke (number two), is edged out by the top-scoring school on the Washington Monthly list, Berea College.
The article at the link explains the reasoning, noting that little known small colleges like Berea and Texas-Rio Grande Valley charge far less yet produce far higher financial career results for their graduates than more famous elite universities.
Washington Monthly has also produced the following additional college rankings:
- Best Colleges for Rural America
- 2026 Best Colleges for Research
- America’s Best Hispanic-Serving Colleges
In each case, the outlet’s criteria puts rigor and results ahead of prestige and reputation. The result consistently puts the bankrupt latter colleges much farther down in the rankings. This is important information that every parent and high school student should consider before choosing their college, or even if it is worthwhile going to college.
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The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
When I was making plans for starting graduate studies nearly 50 years ago, I looked at a number of universities. Some of the best-known names were on my list.
One thing that became apparent was that I didn’t have to attend one of the “snob” institutions in order to get a good education and I could get it for a lot cheaper at those that would have been considered second- or third-tier. I asked myself why I should bother attending a university that charged the proverbial arm and a leg just so that I could have its name on my degree.
I changed jobs several times over the years and I don’t think that my alma mater had much effect on whether I got hired.
Honestly, I’m not impressed with the list.
Having been an engineering hiring manager and college recruiter in past days, there’s not a school on the list where I would bother looking for an engineer.
Most of the ones on this list are far too woke to expect graduates to be properly educated and prepared to enter the working world.
Give me a focused, technically educated graduate any day. Best examples I can think of are Rose-Hulman in Terre Haute, IN, and Olin in Needham, MA.
Ouch, Duke ’91 BSME
Related:
“A little more: Who does the killing when the killing needs to be done? These pasty faced 30 something “progressive” lily white university taught Marxist moralists? ”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/new-owners-of-the-democrat-party-telling-and-showing-you-their-dreams
On ethics
https://phys.org/news/2026-09-largest-formal-ethics-students-moral.html
The Democrat party leadership and their party member today as well as the radicals that have taken over the part. And those Democrats in the public, primarily BETA males and angry white women from where I see things are ideologically based moralists.
Moralist: “overfond of making moral judgements about others’ behavior; too ready to moralize:”
And in this mind set ANYTHING can be justified.
And I mean ANYTHING.
I can personally be moralistic and judgmental just like many people can be personally moralistic and judgmental. The difference however becomes, just like with all Socialists and Communists is that you begin to believe that other people should be forced to live under the rules that other people in power say you should be living under based on their moralism and their judgment.
And the radicals just like the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution see the existential need dispatch those who differ with and refuse to live as they instruct.
And that is where “By any means necessary” spoken by many of the Democrat party leadership and the radicals should have everyone in America concerned.
You see them, you hear them and they are serious as they believe they can taste gaining control of the reins of power so that they can fulfill their clearly stated ideology.
Just like the Bolsheviks.
It cannot happen in America?
You would have also said that a president of the United States and those who surrounded him would never purposefully and strategically throw open the borders of the country to the millions in the world and every illegal that wanted to invade America and its generous welfare state for absolute political power and control.
That could never happen.
Repeal the 19th
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0gMN3CVBX0Y&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D
There’s been a lot of discussion, especially on X, the last few days, about the depending crisis for American tertiary education, mainly triggered by the report in the Wall Street Journal that Syracuse University (annual tuition and room and board: $100K) is facing catastrophic shortfalls in its admissions. A lot of smaller, lower tier colleges have been hit hard, but Syracuse is the biggest player yet to get hit like this.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896?mod=e2tw
We are heading into a demographic trough, since the pool of college eligible applicants is now shrinking every year, since the birth rate started diving in 2008. Add on the Trump Administration’s crackown on international student visas, and growing parental skepticism of the value of sky-high tuition bills at even “elite” institutions, and…you have the makings of a whole lot of chickens coming home to roost. We could well see as many as a thousand colleges forced to close over the coming decade.
I am holding my fire on the Washington Monthly rankings, but I hope we will see more efforts in this vein, to really dive into the actual value of these colleges and universities. Because many simply are not worth the money.
Much of that is a result of universities seeing themselves not as educational institutions but as businesses.
When I was an engineering undergraduate 50 years ago, tuition was around $500/year. That started rising when governments began withdrawing their funding and the universities had to raise cash on their own. But, along with that, came a ponderous bureaucracy (for examples, vice-presidents all over the place) and the staff needed to make them run.
At the same time, the doctrine of “in locum parentis” was slowly abolished and students became customers. Those customers wanted all sorts of fancy-schmancy facilities and those weren’t going to be provided for free. (Personally, I doubt that those improved the quality of the education but, then, I’m of a generation who made do with what we had because we were motivated to do so.)
But, becoming a bureaucrat in a post-secondary institution has its own rewards. A few years ago, I came across the sunshine list for my alma mater and, when I looked through it, I noticed a few familiar names. Many of them started as associate professors while I was still a grad student and they stayed with the system. One, I remember, was, in the space of about 20 years, had become a vice-president. I’m not sure if he was leaning towards management, but I’m sure that the associated salary was a great incentive to move in that direction.
I figured out a few things from that list. First, there’s the professorial pecking order, particularly after one has been granted tenure. With each level, the pay gets better. Once, however, one goes into administration, things become interesting.
Once one has become a full professor, one could become one with a special ranking (e. g., distinguished chair), depending on one’s ability and achievements, as well as whether the institution has created such a position. But the real money is in administration. At my alma mater, it appeared that going from full professor to department head resulted in a raise of about 25%. Becoming a dean after results in a similar raise on top of that. Becoming a senior administrator is where one starts raking it in and I estimated that a 25% raise was probably too low.
The result is that the resulting administrative bloat becomes quite expensive as all those vice-presidents want to be paid and have all their perks and benefits.
Add to that inter-departmental facility rivalry. When one department gets a brand-new building, it seems that everyone else figures they need one as well. At my alma mater, there was a lot of new facilities built (often resulting in the old ones being demolished), though the need for many of them was debatable. Those new buildings weren’t going to pay for themselves.
And don’t forget administrative egotism. A former president of my alma mater insisted that the institution become one of the–wait for it!–“top ten” in the world. That was one reason why there was so much new construction. A lot of gazillionaires were chatted up for funding and, being an alumnus, I was subject to the annual attempts at extortion (sometimes known as donations). All the while, that individual was raking in around a million dollars in salary each year.
Is it any wonder, then, that a university degree has become so excessively expensive and that people have become disenchanted with the system?
I somehow don’t see government withdrawing funding being the big issue considering the federal guarantees on loans. Also, seeing education as a business isn’t a problem if running a proper business that has to deliver a product to keep customers. The problem being that the overpriced product is not being delivered.
The major reason for the overpriced garbage going on is the divorce between the customer and the ones footing the bills. The students can demand anything they want without much in the way of results as they are not the ones paying. They are students with little or no income. Get the government out of the student loan business and see what happens to tuition prices then. Let the parents that would then be footing the bills understand that if they are not getting their moneys worth, then maybe they should have paid more attention when shopping the schools.
A fairly high percentage of the expensive frills in all education could be reduced considerably without damage to the net product. It would take time and thought, not just a knee jerk budget slashing. A distinguished professor lecturing to hundreds of students in an auditorium a few times a week can be replaced with one high-quality video that students can view at leisure and go back to when desired. What can’t be replaced is smaller groups with mentor class instruction.
Working your way through school should become a more popular option.
How we lost shop class
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ngL5Yi4Vloo