"To our way of thinking, a good college is one that meets student needs." So says Forbes.com, which released its "best college" ratings on August 5.
Do you agree with their criteria?
1. quality of the education
2. experience of the students
3. how much students achieve
Other systems, such as US News College Rankings, give heavy weight to external research funding and alumni donations. The assumption is that more money = a better school. Forbes, perhaps ironically given its business orientation, gives most of its weight to student satisfaction and success. When it does evaluate financial criteria, the focus is on the money that students spend, borrow, and ultimately earn rather than the institution's balance sheet. Their student-centered approach measures the criteria as follows.
25%: student ratings: 4 million student evaluations of courses and instructors on RateMyProfessors.com
25%: post-graduate success: equally based on enrollment-adjusted entries in Who's Who in America, and by the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com
20%: average student debt after four years
17%: four-year college graduation rates
13%: number of students or faculty, adjusted for enrollment, who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes
Every school on the list is in about the top 15 percent in the country. Still, I'm disappointed that none of Nebraska's public colleges made the top 100 public colleges. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, at 463rd, is the only public college that made the list at all.
But Doane College and Nebraska Wesleyan University are in the top 100 overall, and Hastings College is 160th. I applaud them!
If you're interested, Forbes.com has a do-it-yourself ranking application that allows you to give your own weight to criteria and see how colleges stack up based on what's most important to you.
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