First up, Washington Monthly National University rankings:
Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research(producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). For an explanation of each category, click here.

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Institution
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Social Mobility
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Research
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Service
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Overall
Score
Students
receiving
Pell grants
Predicted grad rateActual grad rateRank
Research
expenditures,
in millionsRank
Bachelor’s
to PhD
rank
Science &
engineering
PhD’s
awardedRank
Faculty
receiving
significant
awardsRank
Faculty in
national
academiesRank
Peace
Corps
Rank
ROTC
Rank
Federal
work-study
funds spent
on serviceRank
Community
service
participation
and hours
served
Rank
Service
staff,
courses and
financial aid
support
Rank

1
Univ. of California, San [...]

A new book, Higher Education by Andrew Harker, is generating some intense discussion. As part of the research for the book, they have generated an interesting list of colleges where great teaching is happening:
As we traveled around the country researching our book, we, in fact, found some colleges that we thought were doing their job [...]

Oxford is infamous for its admissions process from admission tutors jumping on tables to intense admission exams. One of their colleges has had an additional essay question since the 1930’s. What separates this essay from others is the fact that the prompt is only once word. Some examples: ““style,” “censorship,” “charity,” “reproduction,” “novelty,” “chaos” and [...]

Many international students already speak two or three or more languages. Perhaps you should prusue it to a higher level, making it one of your majors. Need convincing? (or perhaps your parents do). Here are just three random reasons (from a list of 700 well researched reasons):
1) High level plurilinguals as a group do better than [...]

id you know that:

1.25 million Americans work in the visual arts.
One in 111 jobs is in art and design.
The economic impact of art and design exceeds that of sports worldwide.
The creative industries are an estimated $30 billion export annually.
Jobs in design have increased 43% in the past ten years.
Yearly sales of art reach an estimated [...]

Go figure: Young people care about the environment (consumer habits not withstanding). The Princeton Review now offers, for free, a guide to colleges. Download The Princeton Review’s Guide to 286 Green Colleges*Part 1 |  Part 2 |  Part 3 |  Part 4

With 286 colleges profiled, you can get a quick look into how colleges make green contributions. Here is an [...]

File this under “who knew?”
Poland is emerging as a fairly significant player as a higher education destination. Apparently there are now 76 Bachelor’s Degree programs in 23 institutions. AT only 2000 euro a year for tuition and approximately 400 Euro a month expenses, Poland has priced itself at best value end of the continuum.
Click here [...]

Taylor Mali has a goal to create 1000 teachers through poetry and perseverance. He spoke to my students yesterday and I thought I would share one of his landmark poems with you about teachers. The words or below, but Taylor is worth hearing:

What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don’t work out, you can always [...]

I agree with Jeffrey Brenzel, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale,when he explains that “We’ve reversed the equation–that the college is going to make something out of your life, when actually it’s the student who makes something out of college,” he says.He goes on to explain in an interview with the Huffington Post
:
“Any strong college [...]

What They’re Reading on College Campuses
1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 2 (in previous survey)

3. Nightlight: A Parody by the staff of The Harvard Lampoon 10

4. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown 1

5. [...]