It’s hard to stop the media from ranking colleges on way or another. Lately the fad has been to rank them by returns on investment (avwrage salary / sticker price). Why guess who is at the top when The Wall Street Journal will tells you? It’s a tie: Brigham Young (Provo Utah) and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (Rapid City SD) both come it at 10.9%.
Not so long ago colleges and universities used to be proud of the number of graduates who went into public service professions, teaching, ministry, social work, NGOs, community organizing (for example in Chicago, remember, Barak?) But since such work is usually poorly compensated, every time a graduate takes a job in one of these sectors, the institution’s return on investment ranking goes down. And, I presume, the unsuspecting applicants head off to Utah or South Dakota for an intellectually challenging, life transforming, richly satisfying education.