Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 20

TOP 30

NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES
RANK IN U.S.
NEWS (2014)

1.
2.
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5.
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7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
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30.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO (CA)* 39
University of California-Riverside (CA)*
112
University of California-Berkeley (CA)*
20
Texas A&M University-College Station (TX)*
69
University of California-Los Angeles (CA)*
23
Stanford University (CA)
5
University of Washington-Seattle (WA)*
52
Univ. of Texas-El Paso (TX)*
Rank not published
Case Western Reserve University (OH)
37
Harvard University (MA)
2
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main (GA)*
36
University of NC-Chapel Hill (NC)*
30
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (MI)*
28
MA Institute of Technology (MA)
7
University of CA-Santa Barbara (CA)*
41
University of California-Davis (CA)*
39
University of Wisconsin-Madison (WI)*
41
Ohio State University-Main (OH)*
52
University of Notre Dame (IN)
18
University of Texas-Austin (TX)*
52
University of Florida (FL)*
49
Brigham Young University-Provo (UT)
62
Utah State University (UT)*
190
Florida International Univ. (FL)*
Rank not published
Vanderbilt University (TN)
17
University of IL-Urbana-Champaign (IL)*
41
Princeton University (NJ)
1
Arizona State University (AZ)*
142
Michigan State University (MI)*
73
Indiana State University (IN)*
Rank not published
The 2014 U.S. News rankings were released in September 2013.

hand, colleges that are routinely buried in the bottom
tiers of the U.S. News rankings are top performers on our
list. Here are some of the highlights of the 2014  Washington Monthly college rankings.

Public Interest
On the U.S. News list, all the top twenty universities are
private, as are nearly all the top colleges. This is by de20

September/October 2014

sign: under that magazine's metrics, schools get ahead
based on the number of students they don't admit, and
private schools are the most selective. Public institutions that serve a wide range of students fare much better by our measures. Fourteen of our twenty highestranked universities are taxpayer supported.
Strikingly, four of the top five institutions on our
list are University of California campuses. That state's
system has a distinct blend of size, diversity, and research excellence. By enrolling top students from a huge
state with a highly varied population, UC campuses are
able to balance academic excellence with scientific prowess and a commitment to enrolling low-income students
that is unmatched at similar national universities.
The UC campus in Riverside, ranked number two
this year, stands out as a model for other public universities to follow. Riverside falls below most of its system peers by conventional measures. It's not part of the
ultra-exclusive Association of American Universities.
It doesn't enroll students with SAT scores so high that
their graduation is all but guaranteed. Instead, Riverside
is unusually focused on social mobility. Since 2006, its
enrollment has grown by 25 percent. Half of all freshmen
are first-generation college students, and the campus is
the most racially and ethnically diverse within the UC
system. Riverside's focus on public service exceeds that
of almost every other national university.
Other universities that, like Riverside, enroll a majority of students eligible for the federal Pell Grant program while graduating substantially larger numbers of
students than similar institutions include the University of Texas at El Paso and Florida International University. Both are ranked much higher by our criteria than by
conventional, status-obsessed rankings. Georgia Tech,
a highly respected public engineering school, has a net
price of less than $8,500 per year, a bargain compared to
other public schools whose tuition nears $20,000.
While some private universities are highly rated by
our criteria, they don't dominate the upper echelon of
the Monthly list. Many of them are ignoring their obligations, as tax-exempt institutions, to promote the public
welfare. Catholic University in Washington, D.C., takes
an uncharitable approach to college pricing, for example,
with only 13 percent of students eligible for Pell Grants
and an astonishing average net price of nearly $35,000.
It ranks 264th on our list. George Mason, a libertariantinged public university in Virginia, has, perhaps unsurprisingly, terrible public service numbers. Few graduates
go on to earn PhDs. It ranks 210th.
Other big research universities rank higher because
of their contributions to scholarship, but still lag behind
their vaunted conventional reputations. Brown, Northwestern, Georgetown, Boston College, Boston University, Indiana University, and Clemson all fail to crack our
top 100 national universities.
Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

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