17 August 2010, 1:57 am
There's no consensus on what criteria separate "good" from "bad" schools. The USN&WR Ratings have been heavily criticized for being driven by irrelevant factors and being subject to gaming. There was an newspaper article recently by Pulitzer Prize winner Kathleen Parker which discussed an alternate ranking system based on an institution's commitment to seven core general education factors which the authors assume to define a good broad liberal arts education. The organization is ACTA, and one of the drivers is Harry R. Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College. The chosen factors in the ACTA List (http://www.whatwilltheylearn.com/a-list) are: Composition Literature Foreign Language (at Intermediate Level) U.S. Government or History Economics Mathematics Natural or Physical Sciences For completeness, here are the sixteen colleges which received an "A" grade in the ACTA Rankings: Baylor CUNY-Brooklyn East Tennessee State Kennesaw State Lamar ST John's College (MD) St. John's College (NM) Tennessee State Texas A&M (Texas Station) Texas A&M (Corpus Christi) Thomas Aquinas U.S. Air Force Academy U.S. Military Academy (West Point) U of Arkansas—Fayetteville U of Dallas The scores of some renowned or otherwise interesting colleges which might rank high in the USN&WR Rankings are as follows: Harvard D Yale F Princeton C Northwestern F Chicago B Washington U in St. Louis F Vassar F Duke B Amherst F Stanford C Johns Hopkins F Cornell F Hillsdale B UCLA C Berkeley F Williams F http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/13/AR2010081304468.html http://www.whatwilltheylearn.com/... Read More »
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