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WWTL Announces Its First A+ Grade Schools
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is pleased to announce the newest addition to its What Will They Learn?® rating system: the “A+” grade.
For all the debate about whether the US News college rankings provide any sort of meaningful measure of quality, they have encouraged increased public scrutiny of what goes on at the nation’s colleges and universities. I’ve come to appreciate the potential value of rankings or report cards that focus on a particular quality (as opposed to the overbroad idea of best college) in higher education.
A couple of first-time full-page ads in this year’s America’s Best Colleges guidebook (and in the current edition of the magazine) provide two recent examples.
1) On the inside front cover, an ad placed by the American Council of Alumni and Trustee urges readers to “Find out What the College Rankings Don’t Tell You.” Its new website seeks to answer for 100 universities by assigning each a grade from “A” to “F” based on how many of the seven key subjects it requires students to take: Composition, Mathematics, Science, Economics, Foreign Language, Literature, and American Government or History. Among findings:
2) Meanwhile, toward the middle of the guidebook, an ad placed by The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (or FIRE) urges readers to check out school policies related to its mission. A separate ad in the magazine (out this week) highlights schools it considers the “worst of the worst” when it comes to liberty on campus. Those are: Brandeis University, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Tufts University. Bucknell University, a late addition to the list, will be featured in Facebook ads and in the school’s newspaper.
FIRE also posted a 14-minute video about the trials and tribulations of a student-employee at Indiana University— Purdue University Indianapolis who got into trouble for reading a book called Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is pleased to announce the newest addition to its What Will They Learn?® rating system: the “A+” grade.
Launched in 1995, we are the only organization that works with alumni, donors, trustees, and education leaders across the United States to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives an intellectually rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price.
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