UC-San Diego Again Is No. 1 in ‘Washington Monthly’ College Rankings

August 29, 2011, 12:01 am

For the second year in a row, the University of California at San Diego tops Washington Monthly’s college rankings, which use what the magazine calls a “unique methodology” to avoid the “crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige” measured by U.S. News & World Report. Washington Monthly’s list, which has also been criticized for its methodology, is based on how well each institution fosters social mobility (such as what percentage of students receive Pell Grants), furthers research (gauged by faculty awards and Ph.D. production, among other measures), and serves the country (including participation in ROTC and the Peace Corps). UC-San Diego was No. 1 among national universities, one of seven public institutions in the top 10. Tuskegee University was the top baccalaureate college, Berea College the leading liberal-arts college, and Creighton University the No. 1 master’s institution.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

E-mail

richardtaborgreene

This is very nice work——the other magazines and media who compare colleges tend to bury their REAL criteria by having dozens of superficial criteria (their weighting either not mentioned or their myriad sub-criteria (actual measures) not mentioned. Here we have a simple clear 3 point focus that shows what many of us knew, perhaps that all of us knew—the best deals are far different places than the best egos.
sand6432

Ironic that this story appears at the same time as another noting that UC-San Diego is closing four of its library buildings and selling off 150,000 books. Can a university continue to be #1 when it is going in that direction?—Sandy Thatcher
rmelton5

This is a distortion of what is happening at UCSD. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but for the most part collections and services have been merged into existing library facilities with, yes, some necessary culling to make room for them. Books that are being withdrawn are titles that have not circulated in the past ten years AND are available quite easily from another UC campus, with whom we have robust interlibrary loan operations. In fact, perhaps the majority of those titles are held at the joint Southern Regional Library Facility which the five southern-most campuses share. This setup is virtually the same as the offsite storage facilities that many institutions have built in recent years–ours just happens to be further away and is shared by multiple campuses. In these times where universities and libraries are being judged increasingly on their efficiencies and intelligent use of scarce resources, and when new space for library collections is not being authorized by our governing bodies, storing 150,000+ volumes that are not being consulted AND that are available easily to our users in order to make space for new and special collections along with library services that are in higher demand, is an efficient and intelligent use of resources. This ranking is evidence, among other things, that an institution’s library need not house in its main facility every single book and every single back volume of every journal ever published in order to be ranked highly according to criteria that are judged highly important.