Washington Monthly - September/October 2019 - 17

comes for graduates. Berea College is perennially a top five school
on our rankings because it was designed for social mobility. Amherst College is a more traditional elite liberal arts school, but it
enrolls a significantly larger percentage of Pell Grant students
than its highly selective peers.
Bryn Mawr spends more on funded research than any other liberal arts college and is among the very best in graduating
women who go on to earn PhDs. Agnes Scott College in Georgia,
another all-women's school, is tops in sending alumni into the
Peace Corps. College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts, stands out in helping graduates get good-paying jobs and
pay their loans back. For a variety of reasons, women's colleges
and Jesuit schools tend to score highly on our criteria.

Regional Campuses
Selective research universities and liberal arts colleges have historically received most of the rankings attention because they
compete for students in a national market. But they enroll only a
small fraction of undergraduates. Most college students instead
attend a midsized regional public university or community college near home. Students, policymakers, and university trustees
therefore need to know who their local leaders and laggards really
are. That's why we separately rank smaller institutions that primarily educate students seeking bachelor's or master's degrees
and tend to draw from a regional applicant pool.
SUNY Geneseo, our second-ranked master's-granting institution, benefits from New York State's continued investment in
higher learning. While nearly all states enacted large cuts to university budgets after the Great Recession, a few, including New
York and California, have restored almost all of the lost money, or
even increased investment. Geneseo is second out of more than
500 master's institutions on our service rankings. CUNY Baruch
College also ranks high, with an eight-year graduation rate of 70
percent and, unusually, a higher success rate for Pell Grant students than others. Half of Baruch's enrollment is composed of
first-generation students, continuing CUNY's historic role as a
vector of upward mobility for immigrants to New York City, and
tuition remains very low for middle- and lower-income families,
at a little more than $4,000 per year.
Trinity University, a private college with Presbyterian roots
in San Antonio, can't quite match public university prices, and
graduates don't earn a ton of money in the first few years out of
school. But Trinity's loan repayment rate of 92 percent is extraordinarily high, perhaps because of a strong career and academic
focus, besting all other master's institutions in sending graduates to doctoral programs. Goshen College, in Indiana, our second-ranked bachelor's-granting institution, also has a Christian
tradition. Forty percent of Goshen undergrads are first-generation students, making its 69 percent graduation rate impressively
high. Like Trinity, Goshen also sends a strong cohort of graduates
into doctoral programs and manages their financial aid so they
can repay their loans.
People generally don't think of institutions like Goshen
and Trinity as of a kind; they're 1,300 miles apart and don't

TOP 30

LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

RANK IN U.S.
NEWS (2019)

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY (VA)
Harvey Mudd College (CA)
Amherst College (MA)
Berea College (KY)
Bowdoin College (ME)
Middlebury College (VT)
Vassar College (NY)
Pomona College (CA)
Wesleyan University (CT)
Claremont McKenna College (CA)
Haverford College (PA)
Williams College (MA)
College of the Holy Cross (MA)
Bryn Mawr College (PA)
Swarthmore College (PA)
Wellesley College (MA)
Bates College (ME)
Colgate University (NY)
Hamilton College (NY)
Barnard College (NY)
Grinnell College (IA)
Virginia Military Institute (VA)*
Trinity College (CT)
Carleton College (MN)
Davidson College (NC)
Lafayette College (PA)
Franklin and Marshall College (PA)
Smith College (MA)
College of Saint Benedict (MN)
St. Mary's College of Maryland (MD)*

11
18
2
61
5
5
11
5
18
9
11
1
35
27
3
3
22
16
16
25
11
81
46
5
10
36
36
11
86
95

*Public institution

play football against each other on weekends. But the schools
are, in many ways, the face of what successful twenty-firstcentury higher education needs to look like: academically rigorous, demographically diverse, rooted in scholarly and ethical value systems that promote learning and engagement with
the world.
The challenge is to make that definition of excellence the
standard in academia and public life. What we saw in bold letters this year, and have known for much longer, is that universities that chase the lure of fame and money instead will eventually come to bad ends. We're glad to promote a different perspective: not what colleges do for themselves, but what they do
for their country.
Kevin Carey directs the Education Policy Program at New
America and is guest editor of the Washington Monthly College
Guide issue.
Washington Monthly

Washington Monthly - September/October 2019

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