Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 65

AMERICA'S BEST
BANG FOR THE
BUCK COLLEGES
Our one-of-a-kind list of schools that help
non-wealthy students attain marketable
degrees at affordable prices.
By Robert Kelchen
A
lthough the American economy made it through the
first two years of the coronavirus pandemic in surprisingly
strong shape, rising inflation and an unpredictable
supply chain are stretching the budgets of many
families. As the prices of housing, food, gasoline, and other
essentials continue to rise faster than household incomes, a
college education may end up becoming an important item
that families simply cannot afford without taking out large
student and parent loans.
Layer mounting skepticism of the value of higher education
and growing political polarization on top of financial
concerns for many families, and it becomes more crucial than
ever for colleges to provide high-quality, affordable educations
to students from modest financial backgrounds. To help families
identify those institutions, the Washington Monthly created
the Best Bang for the Buck college rankings 10 years ago.
This year's rankings, broken down by region, begin on page 66.
(We used the same data and methodology to create the social
mobility portion of the main rankings, which begin on page
76; the methodology is explained on page 120.)
The Best Bang for the Buck colleges primarily consist of
regionally focused public and private nonprofit colleges that
are dedicated to providing affordable educations to their students.
While some of America's wealthiest and most rejective
colleges-such as Duke, MIT, and Vanderbilt-are highly
ranked, many appear in the middle of the pack despite having
the resources to do better. For example, Amherst College,
ranked the second-best liberal arts school in the country
by U.S. News & World Report, checks in at number 42 in the
Monthly's Best Bang ranking for the Northeast region, despite
an endowment approaching $4 billion to support fewer than
2,000 students. One spot ahead of Amherst is SUNY at New
Paltz, which provides high-value educations to more than
three times as many undergraduates on a far more modest
budget-the university just completed its first capital campaign
to the tune of $25 million.
In the Northeast, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy
again anchors the top of the list, with New York's Boricua
College and Rutgers University-Newark in the top
10, elbowing aside wealthier colleges. Berea College maintains
its top ranking in the South, followed by four Texas
public universities in the top 10. The University of Texas Rio
Grande Valley stands out at number five for graduating 2,106
Pell Grant recipients, or approximately nine times as many
as sixth-ranked Vanderbilt. In the Midwest, Union Institute
& University takes the top spot, followed by National Louis
University and College of the Ozarks.
In the Southeast, Washington and Lee, Georgetown,
and Duke are the top three universities. They represent outstanding
value for the students from lower-income families
whom they accept, but there aren't many of those-
the three universities combined graduate only about 500 Pell
recipients. Florida International University and the University
of Florida are immediately behind, in fourth and fifth
place, and graduate more than 7,000 Pell recipients while
also keeping net prices low. Columbia Southern University,
ranking eighth, deserves recognition for being the only forprofit
college in the top 10. In the West, Brigham Young University
leads the way, followed by the University of Washington
Tacoma and the usual cast of 15 California State University
campuses in the top 30.
We only display the top 50 colleges in print. Online, we
list the full 200-plus colleges per region. Toward the bottom
of those rankings, we find a mix of middling public and private
nonprofit colleges along with a number of for-profit college
chains. Baylor, Liberty, Tulane, Tulsa, and Xavier (Ohio)
are well-known universities that are near the bottom of their
respective regions for charging students with modest means
high net prices and generating unimpressive outcomes.
Robert Kelchen, a professor of education at the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, is data manager of the Washington Monthly College Guide.
Washington Monthly 65
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

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