The Washington Monthly, a political magazine, today published its second annual college rankings, and they’re quite a different animal from the lists compiled by magazines like U.S. News & World Report. As with last year’s rankings (The Chronicle, August 22, 2005), the 2006 batch gives top billing to colleges that are engines of social mobility, not just finishing schools for the super-rich; that foster “scientific and humanistic research”; and that promote an “ethic of service to country.”

With those criteria, the rankings come out quite a bit differently than those compiled by U.S. News. Most of the Ivy League institutions plummet; many state colleges and universities rise to the top. The University of California, for example, put four of its campuses (Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Davis) into the top 10 among national universities.

The top institution over all, as last year, is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among liberal-arts colleges, Bryn Mawr College nosed out last year’s leading institution, Wellesley College, for the top spot.