Two thought leaders in the conservative movement have created a new ranking system to identify the 100 top universities. The rankings will be based on 68 variables across 21 categories, aiming to cover major aspects of on- and off-campus life.
High school students seek objective advice in selecting which colleges should receive their applications. However, the traditional leaders in the ranking field, US News and Forbes, are seen as reaffirming conventional wisdom about prestigious reputation, without regard to the political and philosophical shifts affecting most campuses.
The new rankings are distributed for free to the public on a special website promoted by City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s public policy journal.
The two co-editors of the new ranking system are:
- John D. Sailer – Director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
- Kevin Wallsten – Professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach, and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute
They claim:
“With pressure mounting from students, parents, alumni, and policymakers, now is a time of great uncertainty for the American university—yet also an opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and reform. Some elite universities seem bent on discrediting themselves; others stand out for their efforts to enact meaningful change. In a telling trend, a growing number of students now flock to Southern universities, many of which, unlike their Ivy League counterparts, have preserved or expanded their commitments to open inquiry, intellectual pluralism, and critical thinking.
“Yet too many Americans remain guided by the old markers of prestige. The brightest students often assume by default that the best education will come from Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. These same institutions continue to exert disproportionate cultural and professional influence. These legacy elite schools remain well-positioned primarily because everyone sees them as the best, not because they are actually providing the best undergraduate education.”
As a result, under their rankings, Cornell and the rest of the Ivy League sink toward the bottom:
| University | City Journal | US News | Forbes | Niche |
| Penn | 17 | 7 (tie) | 10 | 12 |
| Princeton | 24 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| Yale | 30 | 4 (tie) | 9 | 2 |
| Columbia | 34 | 15 | 2 | 6 |
| Harvard | 37 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Dartmouth | 57 | 13 (tie) | 17 | 5 |
| Cornell | 61 | 12 | 14 | 21 |
| Brown | 73 | 13 (tie) | 18 | 11 |
The US News and Forbes rankings consider the “reputation” of each school, and many of their factors lag by some years from current campus conditions. US News finds all eight Ivies within the top 15 schools, and Forbes includes them within the top 18 schools. In contrast, the new rankings push Dartmouth, Cornell, and Brown into the bottom half of the ranked 100 universities.
Methodology
The authors give full details on the 68 variables considered, which include things like “campus political climate,” “campus ROTC,” and “Jewish Campus Climate.” The variables are split up into different categories such as “Leadership Quality” and “Outcomes.”
Sailor and Wallsten try to quantify criteria such as the campus political climate. One variable they use is the number of ROTC cadets per 1,000 students. They also considered the number of Gaza encampments and the number of faculty affiliated with the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) or the Heterodox Academy (HxA).
Each of the 68 variables and 21 categories of variables are weighed according to their relative importance. Critics would argue that the weighing of variables in any ranking system introduces the authors’ bias into the results.
Although the new rankings offer an important insight into higher education, it remains to be seen whether they will gain widespread adoption by high school students and their parents to guide future college applications. Alternatively, it is possible that the Trump Administration will adopt this approach in its evaluation of existing colleges.
