Washington Monthly, which has long criticized traditional college ranking systems — see the magazine’s takedown of the U.S. News rankings here — has come up with a college ranking system of its own. Here’s why:

All of the existing college rankings have the same aim — to help overwhelmed parents and students sift through the thousands of colleges and universities in this country by giving them some yardstick for judging the “best” schools. Whether the guides actually do measure academic excellence — as opposed to, say, academic reputation (not always the same thing) — is debatable at best. The publishers of these guides argue that they are providing a valuable consumer service. Parents who will shell out tens of thousands of dollars to put their teenagers through college need to know they are spending their money wisely.

How much more important, then, is it for taxpayers to know that their money — in the form of billions of dollars of research grants and student aid — is being put to good use? These are institutions, after all, that produce most of the country’s cutting-edge scientific research and are therefore indirectly responsible for much of our national wealth and prosperity. They are the path to the American dream, the surest route for hard-working poor kids to achieve a better life in a changing economy. And they shape, in profound and subtle ways, students’ ideas about American society and their place in it. It seemed obvious to us that these heavily subsidized institutions ought to be graded on how well they perform in these roles, so we set out to create the first annual Washington Monthly College Rankings. While other guides ask what colleges can do for students, we ask what colleges are doing for the country.

The system the Monthly...

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