Boola! Boola! Boola! Which Colleges Are Best?

U.S. News & World Report makes much of its rankings of American universities, as do the universities who are given high rankings. But those rankings are based almost entirely on gilding like SAT scores and the wealth of alumni, and do not address the core mission of a university -- to make their students better people and their communities better places.

Kevin Drum and the gang over at Washington Monthly agree, and for the second year have put together their own far less subjective rankings.

As Drum explains:

This includes how well a school performs as an engine of social mobility (ideally helping the poor to get rich rather than the very rich to get very, very rich), how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research, and how well it promotes an ethic of service to country.

Here is WM's Top 10 with USN's ranking in parentheses:

(1.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (7)
(2.) University of California, Berekely (20)
(3.) Pennsylvania State University (48)
(4.) University of California, Los Angeles (25)
(5.) Texas A&M University (60)
(6.) University of California, San Diego (32)
(7.) Stanford University (5)
(8.) Cornell University (13)
(9.) South Carolina State University (Not ranked)
(10.) University of California, Davis (48)

Here is USN's Top 10 with WM's rankings in parentheses:

(1.) Harvard University (28)
(2.) Princeton University (43)
(3.) Yale University (12)
(4.) University of Pennsylvania (30)
(5.) Duke University (23)
(6.) Stanford University (5)
(7.) (tie) California Institute of Technology (109)
(7.) (tie) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (7)
(8.) Columbia University (36)
(9.) Dartmouth College (35)
(10.) Washington University, St. Louis (120)

The different ranking methodologies are apparent in the notable difference between the two Top 10s -- the inclusion of six of the eight Ivy League colleges in the USN list and the inclusion four pre-eminent California state universities and Stanford in the WM list.

Meanwhile, WM ranked these schools in its Bottom 10, none of which were ranked by USN:

(245.) University of Alaska, Fairbanks
(244.) Oakland (Calif.) University
(243.) University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
(242.) University of Louisiana, Lafayette
(241.) University of Colorado, Denver & Health Sciences Center
(240.) Florida Atlantic University
(239.) University of New Orleans
(238.) University of Missouri, St. Louis
(237.) University of Hartford
(236.) University of Massachusetts, Lowell

The entire Washington Monthly package can be read here.