Political Provocateur

Via TownHall.com:

Here’s an irony for you: Each year, the most prestigious universities in America—some of them founded long before our country—are ranked to great fanfare by the staff of a third-tier news magazine that has actually stopped its print edition. Its college ranking is pretty much all that’s left of U.S. News and World Report—which is really a shame, since its reporting was always better than Time’s or Newsweek’s. I’m less thrilled about its rankings, which are heavily biased in favor of rich schools that are already famous, where teaching typically comes second to research—much of which is obscure or politically charged.

The top National Universities choices are pretty predictable: Every year, the three or four top Ivies shuffle places with a few massive state schools—not surprising, since nearly half each college’s score is based on a) What administrators at other schools say about a college and b) how much the college spends per student. What is worse, the U.S. News guide pretty much pretends that campus politics, classroom bias, and threats to free expression aren’t problems—which is rather like ranking restaurants without worrying about their hygiene.

Zmirak goes on to (quite expertly) add his own addendum to the report, listing the three most politicized colleges in the country (Wesleyan, Barnard and Bard -all in the left-leaning NE I might add) and the schools with the lamest curricula in America (Brown, Amherst and Hamilton). Maybe Clemson belongs in the top 20 after all…