January 15, 2008

U. of Washington Again Leads in Peace Corps Volunteers

For the second year in a row, the University of Washington has topped the Peace Corps’s list of colleges and universities producing the most volunteers for the international-service agency, according to a notice posted on its Web site yesterday.

Washington has 113 undergraduate alumni working overseas, followed by the University of Wisconsin at Madison with 99 and the University of Colorado at Boulder with 94. The ranking for 2008 mirrors the results from last year.

Among medium-size institutions, the University of Virginia was in the lead, with 72 alumni volunteers. The University of Chicago had the most volunteers among small institutions, with 34.

This year five institutions reached the 2,000 mark for all-time alumni volunteers: the Universities of Wisconsin at Madison, Washington, Colorado at Boulder, and Michigan at Ann Arbor, as well as Michigan State University. The University of California at Berkeley has graduated the most volunteers since the Peace Corps began, in 1961, with a grand total of 3,326. —Beckie Supiano

Comments

1. The University of Chicago is a “small institution”?

   — CU Alum    Jan 15, 09:21 PM    #

2. The ranking has a very different appearance when expressed as a percentage of undergraduate enrollment. The only large schools making the top 30 are George Washington, Virginia, and UNC-CH.

   1 Willamette 1.49%
   2 Grinnell 1.13%
   3 Carleton 1.11%
   4 Reed 1.07%
   5 Lewis and Clark 1.06%
   6 Puget Sound 1.02%
   7 St. Mary’s Maryland 0.98%
   8 Colorado College 0.91%
   9 William & Mary 0.89%
   10 Macalester 0.89%
   11 Mount Holyoke 0.84%
   12 Bowdoin 0.81%
   13 American 0.75%
   14 Gonzaga 0.75%
   15 Chicago 0.71%
   16 Middlebury 0.71%
   17 Hamline 0.70%
   18 Oberlin 0.64%
   19 St. Olaf 0.62%
   20 Georgetwon 0.61%
   21 Colgate 0.61%
   22 GWU 0.61%
   23 Wheaton 0.59%
   24 Bucknell 0.59%
   25 Trinity 0.57%
   26 Mary Washington 0.50%
   27 Wesleyan 0.50%
   28 Virginia 0.49%
   29 Pepperdine 0.49%
   30 UNC_CH 0.47%
   31 Boston College 0.47%
   32 Brandeis 0.45%
   33 Dartmouth 0.44%
   34 Hope 0.44%
   35 Western Washington 0.41%
   36 Washington 0.41%
   37 Oregon 0.41%
   38 Miami 0.40%
   39 Yale 0.39%
   40 Wake Forest 0.39%
   41 Cornell 0.38%
   42 Truman SU 0.36%
   43 Colorado-Boulder 0.36%
   44 UC-Santa Cruz 0.36%
   45 Northwestern 0.36%
   46 Brown 0.35%
   47 Tufts 0.34%
   48 Humboldt SU 0.34%
   49 James Madison 0.33%
   50 Wisconsin-Madison 0.33%
   51 Boston Univ 0.32%
   52 UC_Berkeley 0.31%
   53 Pittsburgh 0.31%
   54 Michigan 0.31%
   55 Marquette 0.30%
   56 Pennsylvania 0.30%
   57 Washingto-St Louis 0.30%
   58 Notre Dame 0.28%
   59 Colorado SU 0.27%
   60 UC-Santa Barbara 0.26%
   61 Vermont 0.25%
   62 Johns Hpkins 0.24%
   63 Northern Arizonia 0.23%
   64 New Hampshire 0.23%
   65 Michigan SU 0.22%
   66 Montana 0.22%
   67 Minnesota-Twin Cities 0.22%
   68 UC-San Diego 0.22%
   69 Texas-Austin 0.21%
   70 Kansas 0.20%
   71 Virginia Tech 0.20%
   72 UC-Davis 0.19%
   73 Indiana 0.18%
   74 UC-Los Angeles 0.17%
   75 Appalachian SU 0.17%
   76 Illinois-Urbana-Champaign 0.16%
   77 Binghamton 0.16%
   78 Florida 0.14%
   79 Purdue 0.14%
   80 Pennsylvania SU 0.12%
   81 Texas A&M 0.12%
   82 Arizona SU 0.11%

   — RFW    Jan 16, 02:25 PM    #

3. This “per capita” statistic is rather more useful and is quite interesting. It’s particularly interesting that three of the top five schools on this measure are from the Pacific Northwest—in fact, all three are in Oregon. Wonder if this means anything or is a statistical artifact.

   — Tom Birkland    Jan 17, 11:33 PM    #

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