In its most recent issue, The Washington Monthly “asks not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country.”

As far as we’re concerned, when in-state tuition is more than $8,000 and out-of-state tuition is nearly triple that, you can ask whatever you want of your college. But The Washington Monthly raises a good point. Universities are public trusts, recieving billions in tax-payer dollars for research every year. At public universities like our own, tax-payers keep the lights on. And according to The Washington Monthly, they’re getting a pretty good value.

The university ranked 71st out of the 258 colleges on the magazine’s list. The University of California-Berkely finished first, and the University of New Orleans finished last. Here are some of the guiding principals editors considered when developing the list:

“Are our colleges making good use of our tax dollars? Are they producing graduates who can keep our nation competitive in a changing world? Are they, in short, doing well by doing good?”

The university’s relatively high ranking makes sense. Eleven percent of our students recieved Pell Grants in 2008 (the magazine considered how university’s contribute to social mobility), and we do oodles of research. Oh yeah, and we haven’t destroyed Route 1 in awhile.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.