Higher Education and the Numerous and Complex Factors of Annual College Rankings!

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Do Boricua College, Blue Field State University Elizabeth City State University, and Mississippi University for Women sound familiar to you? What do these institutions have in common? They are all part of Washington Monthly’s list of best 25 colleges and universities in 2025. The list is diverse and pluralistic in regard to student population, geographical region, and overall institutional mission. Some colleges on the list are famous and historically well regarded. Others are largely obscure and little-known outside of their regions. Nonetheless, each of them demonstrates the abundant possibilities that arise when colleges view students and the public’s well-being as some of their highest, if not the highest, priorities.

Over the past two decades, Washington Monthly has published rankings with the intent of avoiding what it believes the most prestigious rankings seek to reward: an institution’s wealth, prestige, and exclusivity. This tendency causes most lists to include the same top 10 or 20 elite universities, most of which are private. For example, when the U.S. News & World Report published its 2026 college rankings on September 25, the results were predictable. Although there were some slight changes, Ivy League schools such as Princeton and Harvard remained in their top five. Historically…