Local Schools Top in National Good

The Washington Monthly has for the first time released its own college rankings to mirror the U.S. News and World Report list. However, instead of the academic-elite standards of the Report, the Monthly selected criteria that measure the college's benefit to the nation, including social mobility, the amount of scientific research, the number of people going into national service. The number one university on the list is MIT; the number one college Wellesley.

What's unfortunate is how poorly some of our local powerhouses rank: Harvard (#1 in the Report) is #16. Also, as the article notes,

The National Survey of Student Engagement compiles such information as the average number of hours students at a particular school spend doing homework or meeting with professors outside of class—measures which, studies show, are highly correlated with academic achievement. Unfortunately, the vast majority of colleges and universities refuse to grant NSSE permission to release their schools' scores to the public, and legislation to force them to do so, sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), has been stifled in Congress.