New Orleans Colleges and universities are in the news these days, but that’s mainly because Trump is attacking higher education in general and in individual cases, he is joining with his subservient Education Department in attempting to force specific institutions to kowtow to his will and program. After a flurry of beatdowns at elite and Ivy League, he is now trying to force nine, largely state schools to surrender all academic freedoms to his whim, freeze tuition for five years, and reduced foreign student enrollment. Only the University of Texas has embraced this new agreement that the administration is touting as the gateway to continuing to receive huge federal research grants. As prospective students here and around the world think about what schools might work for their higher education, the administration has added a new category for them to consider. Will the school allow a diversity of opinion or become a high-priced propaganda and indoctrination center with parents and students paying the bills?
We’re in the season for the published rankings to come out, though none of them will focus on this issue. The US News and World Report pioneered the development of this money-making machine for their publication, and that is pretty much all they do now. The Wall Street Journal recently released their special section with some new twists and turns. Given all of the concerns about costs and student loans, they now have a column entitled “years to pay off net price,” but it all looked ridiculously optimistic, alleging at the top of the rankings that everything could be settled in less than 2 years. They still have a column called “diversity,” so the MAGA crew needs to get Rupert Murdoch on the bat phone to get rid of that.
I had an interesting talk with the editor-in-chief of the Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris, about their annual college ranking. Their website argues that “they rate schools based on what they do for the country. It’s our answer to U.S. News & World Report, which relies on crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige.” Looking at their aggregated top ten is a good look how solid and eclectic the results are from their methodology:
Berea College, California State University, Fresno, Princeton University, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, The University of Central Florida, Williams College, Brigham Young University, Pomona College, Arizona State University, and Johns Hopkins University.
What a list? Four state schools that would be unknown to most other than Arizona State and the new found sports success of the University of Central Florida. I had a nephew who went to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on a track scholarship, and it looks like he might should have stayed down there. There’s only one Ivy, Princeton, and one little Ivy, Williams, where I did time on and off for two years, and was surprised to see here. Berea is unique and Pomona and John Hopkins are also private colleges, while Brigham Young is a well-known school owned and run by the Church of Latter Day Saints.
The Washington Monthly, as we have seen, makes the claim that they are looking for what is good for the student and the country, but their methodology would be different than what Trump might prefer. Their …
…main rankings now have four equally weighted portions: access, affordability, outcomes, and community and national service. This means that top-ranked colleges needed to be excellent across the full breadth of our measures, rather than excelling in just one measure.
The Journal might track outcome on earnings, and cost in terms of payback rates, but the Monthly, by giving equal weight to all of these categories in the more than 1400 schools they tracked, including, importantly “national service,” is unique.
Not that looking at all of these rankings might not give heartburn to parents and headaches to 17-year-olds, but for those with hopes and dreams for coming generations, some of these factors shouldn’t be ignored or pushed aside based on a heavier weight to future income.