Guest columnist: Hold the Ivy

Prestige. When it comes to colleges, what is it but a focus on selectivity, exorbitant tuition fees and general snootiness?

Many prospective college students rely on the U.S. News & World Report rankings when making their selection, and while there is no doubt that the top-ranked schools of Ivy League fame are excellent educators, the customary college rankings are rigidly and poorly defined.

Yes, Harvard may churn out Wall Street success stories who go on to wreck the economy, but what about the schools that lead students to contribute to their communities, not merely their bank accounts? Such is the premise of Washington Monthly’s enlightened College Guide, a ranking system that focuses on “how well individual colleges and universities [meet] their public obligations in the areas of research, service and social mobility.”

First published in 2005, the guide was originally intended to be a one-time gig, serving solely as a comparison to traditional rankings. Its newest results are refreshing; rewarding colleges for “academically and economically diverse” students, humorously noting that U.S. News & World Report uses the same methods — but in
reverse.

The schools where only the “well-off need apply” fare poorly by Washington Monthly’s standards.

A variety of categories are ranked in Washington Monthly, including dropout factories — these are sleazy schools that often cater to nearby, low-income students who seek upward mobility only to find poorly run operations and a stale learning environment. In first place, with a whopping 5 percent graduation rate, is Southern University at New Orleans.

Within national rankings, a few well-rounded private universities reached eminence in both ranking systems (namely Stanford University). But while the top 20 for U.S. News & World Report were solely private, the College Guide includes 13 public schools.
I must admit, however, I have become somewhat disenchanted with the prestigious private schools, and subsequently, the rankings that prop them up after reading Walter Kirn’s “Lost in the Meritocracy: the Overeducation of an Underachiever,” which follows Kirn’s hilarious travails and intellectual deceptions throughout the public education system and Princeton University.

It’s an unreasonable feeling I have to only see the standardized tests and façade of intelligence that are often crucial to success.

It is present within every school. But after seeing a friend’s shocked, disgusted face when he learned of my intentions to go to IU (where I am receiving a superb and affordable education among a delightfully huge hodgepodge of humanity) rather than Princeton, I questioned the value of prestige.

IU might not be Ivy League, but it’s prestigious in its own right. And where does IU fall in Washington Monthly’s ratings? At 83 out of 258 (behind Purdue’s 48). It’s not a bad score, and with a student body of about 40,000, there are countless opportunities for volunteering and community efforts.  

Washington Monthly’s college guide is ingenious. Nevertheless, while I may take umbrage with some aspects of the conventional ranking system, I do not mean to disregard it; both must be used simultaneously when mulling over one’s options. Read the Princeton Review, flip through the rankings of U.S. News & World Report and compare them with the recently established lists of the Washington Monthly.


E-mail: celgrund@indiana.edu