Eager to know how some of the nation’s most prominent publications stacked your institution against regional rivals, or other kindred mission-based institutions? Lucky for you, an onslaught of college rankings precipitated into our inboxes this past week from Forbes, Washington Monthly and The Princeton Review.
As a new academic year begins, the chance for higher ed leaders to impose bragging rights is renewed.
But let’s address the elephant in the room: U.S. News & World Report announced they aren’t releasing their ranking until Sept. 24. Depending on how well your institution performs, start prepping your communications teams to share the good news—or decry its unfair methodology.
Comparing rankings
Forbes and the Washington Monthly shared seven institutions in their top 10, all of which are Ivy League or Ivy Plus schools. The University of California, Berkeley, which ranked No. 5 on Forbes, was the only public university to appear among the top 10 on either list.
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While The Princeton Review does not formally rank schools, filtering the list by popularity introduces the usual suspects at the top of the chart: Harvard, Cornell, Brown, NYU, Stanford and the like.
| Rank | Forbes | Washington Monthly |
| 1 | Princeton University | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 2 | Stanford University | Stanford University |
| 3 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | University of Pennsylvania |
| 4 | Yale University | Harvard University |
| 5 | University of California, Berkeley | Princeton University |
| 6 | Columbia University | Columbia University |
| 7 | University of Pennsylvania | Duke University |
| 8 | Harvard University | Cornell University |
| 9 | Rice University | California Institute of Technology |
| 10 | Cornell University | University of Notre Dame |
Looking to filter out traditionally elite schools? Check out The Washington Monthly’s “Bang for Buck” category or Forbes’ public college ranking.
What to expect with the new football season
Florida State and Georgia Tech kicked off college football this past Saturday in Dublin. A few notable changes regarding the season:
- It will be longer: The College Football Playoff extended its championship tournament bracket to 12 teams. As a result, the championship game won’t take place until Jan. 20, about two weeks later than usual.
- Grueling travel regime: Atlantic Coast schools that jumped ship from the PAC-12 last year are slated to face off against opponents in the Midwest and East Coast this season, doubling student-athletes’ travel time. Some academic leaders have described these recent changes as having a “corrosive effect” on the mission of higher education.
- Sharing revenue with athletes: The NCCA voted in a landmark settlement in May that allows institutions to share their athletics revenue with their athletes. Combined with emerging NIL deals, soon some of your students may make more than your yearly salary.
- A rowdier crowd? The number of colleges participating in the Power 5 athletic conferences and selling alcohol in their stadiums during gameday has ticked up dramatically in the past decade, AP News found last November. Specifically, 55 of 69 of them, or 80%, now sell alcohol on their premises.
Survey unveils complicated findings on campus antisemitism
Lawmakers and federal agencies last year criticized colleges and universities they suspected of allowing discrimination to spread on campuses, particularly against Jewish students. As college leaders brace for the potential impact of fall protests, one group of researchers is asking if antisemitism is as rampant as public discourse suggests.
The answer is “yes and no,” according to a recent Brandeis University survey of more than 4,000 students at 60 colleges with large Jewish populations. Sixty-six percent of non-Jewish students did not express hostility toward Jews or Israel. On the other hand, 15% were extremely hostile toward Israel but did not view Jews negatively, and 16% endorsed at least one explicitly anti-Jewish belief but did not criticize Israel.
“We do not find a climate of universal anti-Jewish hatred, nor do we find that Jewish students’ concerns about antisemitism are unfounded,” the report reads.
However, researchers warned about the small, yet vocal, minority of students who do hold beliefs hostile toward Jews or Israel.
