Best KY Colleges for the Country

The college ratings of the Washington Monthly are different.  They rank colleges not by how "selective" they are (seeking only Rapey McLiarFace types), but by how inclusive they are, opening doors to the non-rich and the un-privileged.

They rank colleges by how much they promote public service among their students - the military, non-profits, etc.

They rank colleges by their investment in and promotion of scientific research.

Here, let them explain it:

Thirteen years ago, the Washington Monthly set out to solve a problem. The higher education market was dominated by the U.S. News & World Report rankings, which reward wealth, fame, and exclusivity. College leaders responded to the temptation of better U.S. News scores by raising prices, chasing status, and marketing themselves to the children of privilege.

We thought the nation needed exactly the opposite: smart, well-run colleges that enrolled students from all walks of life and helped them earn a high-quality diploma at an affordable price. Colleges that instilled a sense of service and public obligation while producing groundbreaking research.

So we decided to do something about it and create our own ranking—not based on what colleges do for themselves, but on what they do for their country. After all, everyone benefits when colleges push the boundaries of scientific discovery and provide paths to opportunity for the next generation of low-income students. And everyone pays for college, through taxes and other forms of public support.

Check out the complete 2018 Washington Monthly rankings here. 

Today, the Washington Monthly rankings are often listed alongside (or above) U.S. News when colleges tout their national standing. We rate schools on three equally weighted criteria: social mobility, research, and public service. Instead of rewarding schools that reject 95 percent of applicants, we give high marks to colleges that enroll lots of low-income students and help them graduate and earn a good living without too much debt. We factor in pure research spending and the number of undergraduates who go on to earn PhDs. And we give extra weight to colleges that send their graduates out into the world to serve the community at large.

Kentucky colleges and universities are ranked on the Washington Monthly list:  some high, some low.  Here are this year's:

Berea College ranks number one in the country among liberal arts colleges.  It's been number one for years, mostly because tuition is free, but also because the education is superb.  It will likely stay there for a while.

Among vocational certificate programs, Ashland Community and Technical College in Ashland is rated third best in the nation for Welding.   No Kentucky program made the "worst in the nation" lists.

Among best 4-year colleges for adult learners, the University of Kentucky lands at 69 and Midway University at 94 out of 100.

Among "Best Bang for the Buck Colleges," listed by region, the list for the South has Berea College at number one, of course, but Alice Lloyd College made number 6 and Midway College made number 23 out of 50.

On the list of 316 national universities, the highest ranked Kentucky school was the University of Louisville, at 169.  The University of Kentucky followed at 180, University of the Cumberlands at 249, and Spaulding University at 310.

And finally, among 150 Baccalaureate Colleges, Kentucky Weslyan is the 15th best in the nation, and Alice Lloyd College is 31st.

These are schools that genuinely serve their students as well as the country.  Kentucky can do better than this, people. Stop the hemorrhaging of funding leading to massive cuts in programs and ridiculous tuition and fees. Restore real liberal arts education to our state schools.  Ignore that ignorant billionaire philistine in the Governor's mansion and remember what tax-payer-funded education is supposed to do.

Oh, no you don't. Not the top student at MY alma mater.

At 22, Omar Salinas Chacon has already accomplished more and overcome more racist, unAmerican obstacles than every fascist, torturing, Constitution-fucking ICE agent in the country put together.

That the trumpie stormtroopers would even think about deporting Salinas Chacon is a mountain of shame on us, the American citizens who are letting it happen.

From the Herald:

By any measure, Eastern Kentucky University senior Omar Salinas Chacon is a model student.

With a double major in political science and Spanish, a longtime member of student government and a captain of the mock trial team, Salinas Chacon recently was named “Student of the Year” by the National Collegiate Honors Council, the top prize in the nation for honors students. After graduation, he plans to go to law school to help those less fortunate than himself.

But right now, Salinas Chacon, 22, can’t see a future beyond October 2019. That’s when his status as a legal resident ends under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives legal status to children brought to this country by their parents. The program is at the center of a protracted political argument in Washington. Unless Congress reaches a compromise, Salinas Chacon and hundreds of thousands of others who were born elsewhere but grew up in the United States could be targeted for deportation in coming months and years.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article201739959.html#storylink=cpy

“We work hard for this country, and this is our home. We don’t know any other,” said Salinas Chacon, who came from El Salvador at age 5 after his father and grandfather were kidnapped by gangs. He and his brother grew up in Nashville and Louisville. “But now the rug is being pulled out from under us and we’re being played as chess pieces in a bigger political game.”

 

SNIP

 

The U.S. Supreme Court could decide Friday if it will review the lower court’s ban on DACA deportations.

Despite the turmoil and uncertainty, Salinas Chacon has stayed busy. He’s a peer mentor to other Latino students and works as the student assistant to the director of the EKU Latino Retention program. (Because of his immigration status, he cannot receive federal financial aid to help pay for college.)

“Omar stands as a paragon example of exactly what is at stake in this policy debate,” said Dr. David Coleman, director of EKU’s Honors Program. “Although always a stellar student, he has because of his immigration status been ineligible to apply for many of the nationally competitive fellowships for which he otherwise would have been extremely competitive.”

Dreamers are fighting.  We have to get their backs. 

Why Repugs Hate College

The Rude Pundit nails it:

58% of Republicans in a poll this past summer said that college has a "negative effect" on the country. Which, if you think about it, is pretty fucked up because Republicans are, in large part, responsible for gutting and dumbing down elementary and secondary education and making it so that most decent jobs require a Bachelor's degree. But now that kids are going to college and learning history and other shit that makes them question authority, especially religious and conservative authority, all of a sudden it's bad.

The right can't just say, "We hate universities because they teach kids how to be decent human beings, and it actually sticks for some of them." But conservatives can point to the excesses at a pretty limited number of colleges, like protests against speakers or speech codes or other stuff. Then they can say, "Oh, look at these motherfucking intolerant lefties who get so much from the government."

And if they can fuck the kids over in the name of keeping more people stupid and thus keeping them more Republican, all the better.

Add higher education to the list of nice things we can't have because repugs refuse to vote money for it.

Want affordable college for yourself and your kids?  Vote those education-hating repugs out of office!

Gov. I Got Mine Fuck You Doesn't Know What Education Is

Bevin's exposing the real agenda of repugs in disparaging public education and demanding colleges teach nothing but computer coding:

They don't want informed citizens.  They want mindless drones who will work for pennies an hour.


Bruce Schreiner, AP:

Gov. Matt Bevin bluntly suggested Tuesday that some academic programs on Kentucky’s college campuses have outlived their necessity in times of tight state budgets.
 
With a pointed jab at the job prospects of interpretive dancers, the Republican governor challenged public university boards and presidents to consider eliminating some courses that don’t produce graduates filling high-wage, high-demand jobs.

His message comes as the state tries to fix its failing public pension systems, and economists estimate Kentucky faces a $200 million shortfall when the fiscal year ends in mid-2018.

 “Find entire parts of your campus … that don’t need to be there,” Bevin said in a speech to a higher education conference. “Either physically as programs, degrees that you’re offering, buildings that … shouldn’t be there because you’re maintaining something that’s not an asset of any value, that’s not helping to produce that 21st century educated workforce.”

We already have a 21st century workforce.  What we lack is 21st century wages and benefits that workforce earns.

What we lack is 21st century citizenship on the part of workers who will fight for their right to vote, and rich fucks who will pay their fair share of taxes, and corporations who use their profits to invest in our communities rather than socking those profits overseas where they don't have to pay taxes.

And that kind of citizenship is only learned in public education classrooms and college seminars that value a broad liberal arts education.

Including "interpretive dance" that Bevin so disparages.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article172961586.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article172961586.html#storylink=cpy“Find entire parts of your campus … that don’t need to be there,” Bevin said in a speech to a higher education conference. “Either physically as programs, degrees that you’re offering, buildings that … shouldn’t be there because you’re maintaining something that’s not an asset of any value, that’s not helping to produce that 21st century educated workforce.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article172961586.html#storylink=cpy

Turning Kentucky's Proud Universities into Vocational Schools

Shame on you, Eastern. SHAME.  Tell Governor Lying Coward and the austerity-loving motherfuckers in the General Assembly to give you the goddamn money you need to educate Kentuckians to survive in an ever-changing world.

A world that demands critical thinking skills.  Critical thinking skills that can only be learned from a broad liberal arts education.  The kind of liberal arts education that Kentucky governors worked for decades to build in Bowling Green and Morehead and Murray and yes, Richmond. 

The kind of liberal arts education that is a clear and present danger to the repugs who know they appeal only to mouth-breathing, slope-headed, know-nothing morons.

The kind of liberal arts education that must be destroyed.

From the Herald:

Amid statewide budget cuts for the next two years, Eastern Kentucky University is deciding which academic majors and minors should be cut and which need more support. 

French, journalism, theater, horticulture and geography are recommended for suspension in a preliminary report by the Academic Budget Review Subcommittee of majors and minors that have had fewer students in recent years.

SNIP

On the other hand, physics made the probationary list, with an average of just seven majors in eight years. But, “as a STEM discipline, the program should be supported,”

HA!  STEM, of course.  Only tech geeks will receive an education; everyone else will be indoctrinated into obeying their corporate overlords without question.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article97136502.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article97136502.html#storylink=cpy

Matt Bevin Throws Temper Tantrum, Shows Ass

Is he taking diplomacy and tact lessons from Paul LePage in Maine?  Who in his office thinks this is the proper way to respond publicly to the Kentucky Attorney General, regardless of what you really think?

From the press release:

“As best we can make sense of his rambling press conference, we strongly disagree with the Attorney General and will respond as necessary in court. Given the amount of alleged corruption and personnel problems in the Office of Attorney General and his father’s administration it is clear that he is attempting to deflect attention away from his own challenges.”

That's the whole thing, except for an introductory line claiming it is a "statement from Communications Director Jessica Ditto."  So Bevin's hiding behind his staff now?  It's on Governor's Office letterhead and the Lying Coward owns it.

I am no fan of Andy Beshear, but if he doesn't take full advantage of this stupidity, he really will be useless.

Ky Lite Guv: Education is For Job Training, Not Enlightenment

Jenean Hampton certainly has the Koch Brothers corporatist line down pat. In a lords-n-serfs economy, the last thing the masters need is serfs who can think critically and might object to being drones for starvation wages.

James Bruggers at the Courier:

Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton told the editorial staff of the Eastern Kentucky University student newspaper that colleges and students should focus on programs that produce jobs.

“I would not be studying history," she was quoted as saying in an article posted on The Eastern Progress' website Thursday.

SNIP

The Eastern Progress also reported that Hampton called higher education a "privilege," and "not a right."

And it quoted her as suggesting she does not want her taxes to support universities.

“Those of us who go to work must give part of their earnings to put you through college, and I disagree with that," the newspaper reported.

Yes, Hampton is African-American.  Promoting a future of slave labor. Shame on her.

Bevin's Fuck You to Higher Education

Because all kids learn in real colleges and universities is critical thinking, which leads to liberalism and voting Democratic.  Can't have that.

Adam Beam, AP:

As Kentucky inches toward a budget crisis over college funding, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin on Thursday ordered immediate 4.5 percent cuts for all public colleges and universities.

In a letter to Finance Secretary William Landrum and Budget Director John Chilton, Bevin ordered the allotments for Kentucky's eight public universities and its community and technical college system to be reduced by 4.5 percent "before the close of business" Thursday. The cuts would impact state funding for the colleges and universities in the current budget year that ends June 30.

Bevin's order comes as state lawmakers are locked in a stalemate over a two-year state spending plan. Senate Republicans have insisted on taking money from colleges and universities and spending it on the state's public pension debt, estimated at more than $30 billion. House Democrats have refused to agree to any cuts in education.

The two sides broke off negotiations Thursday, making it less likely the legislature will pass a budget by April 12. That could lead to a partial shutdown of state government.

SNIP

 

Brian Wilkerson, spokesman for Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo, said House Democrats were just made aware of the letter Thursday afternoon.

"Our legal team is reviewing the order at this point," he said.

SNIP

University of Kentucky spokesman Jay Blanton said university officials have not been officially notified of the cuts. University President Eli Capilouto has been one of the most vocal critics of Bevin's proposed cuts, calling them "draconian."

"Gov. Bevin announced this measure in January, so we anticipated it," Blanton said. "We will be working over the next few months to implement this reduction with the context of our current-year budget. It is too early to speculate on the specific measures we will take."

University of Louisville spokesman John Karmen said the school is still examining the impact any budget cuts would have on the school.

Other schools have already taken action to address the cuts. Morehead State University officials announced a mandatory, unpaid five-day furlough for all employees in response to the cuts.

 Bevin's conservatard austerity already killing jobs.

KY Dems Reject Austerity, Prove Bevin's Budget is Bullshit

Democrats in the Kentucky House aren't falling for the old "shared sacrifice" budget con; they know that repugs always mean the poor and working class sacrifice while the rich pocket yet more profits.

Adam Beam at AP:

Kentucky House Democrats used their reinforced majority to reject nearly half of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's budget cuts Tuesday while still managing to fully fund required contributions to the state's struggling public pension systems without borrowing money.

The House Appropriations and Revenue committee approved a two-year state spending plan Tuesday, with the full House scheduled to vote on the plan Wednesday. Most Republicans on the committee voted "pass," meaning they did not vote for or against the bill. Rep. Jim Stewart of Flat Lick was the only Republican to vote "yes."

Bevin, the state's second Republican governor in four decades, quickly declared the state was in a financial disaster less than two months after taking office and called for $650 million in spending cuts in his first budget proposal. The reductions included a 4.5 percent cut this year and 9 percent cuts in each of the next two years, with a lot of that money coming from the state's public colleges and universities.

College presidents revolted, calling the cuts "draconian" and warning about massive tuition increases, program cuts and, in one instance, possible closure if the cuts were approved. Bevin did not relent, telling a crowd of community college supporters in the Capitol rotunda that "the cuts have to come from somewhere" and declaring as recently as last week he would not sign a budget that did not include the cuts.

But Democrats ran against Bevin's budget cuts in a series of special elections last week, winning three of the four seats to give them a 53-47 majority in the House. It takes 51 votes to pass a budget. Tuesday, they rejected all of Bevin's cuts to colleges and universities.

Bring Back Skilled Trades

Tried to find a plumber lately? An electrician?  How about a carpenter or a mason?  Forget wanting one who's affordable; they're so scarce these days you can't get one for any amount of money.

PZ Myers:

You know, I’m a professor at four-year liberal arts college, and I think Mike Rowe is on to something here. The kind of education we deliver is not for every one.

Now, eight years later, unemployment is down, interest rates are under control, and inflation is in check. But the overall labor participation rate is very low, and the skills gap is wider than ever. In fact, the latest numbers are out, and they are astonishing. According to the Department of Labor, America now has 5.6 million job openings.
Forget your politics for a moment, and consider the enormity of what’s happening here. Millions of people who have stopped looking for work, are ignoring 5.6 million genuine opportunities. That’s not a polemic, or a judgment, or an opinion. It’s a fact. And so is this: most of those 5.6 million opportunities don’t require a diploma – they require require a skill.

Unfortunately, the skilled trades are no longer aspirational in these United States. In a society that’s convinced a four-year degree is the best path for the most people, a whole category of good jobs have been relegated to some sort of “vocational consolation prize.” Is it any wonder we have 1.3 trillion dollars in outstanding student loans? Is it really a surprise that vocational education has pretty much evaporated from high schools? Obviously, the number of available jobs and the number of unemployed people are not nearly as correlated as most people assume.

I’m no economist, but the skills gap doesn’t seem all that mysterious – it seems like a reflection of what we value. Five and half million unfilled jobs is clearly a terrible drag on the economy and a sad commentary of what many people consider to be a “good job,” but it also represents a tremendous opportunity for anyone willing to learn a trade and apply themselves.

Part of the problem is also that the licensing agencies for plumbers and electricians set rules to ensure that there is always a shortage of licensed plumbers and electricians, thus keeping prices high.

I think skilled workers of all kinds should be paid commensurate with their skills, and licensing agencies should stop distorting the market with protectionist rules.

And I think no one, regardless of education or wealth, should look down on anyone who does a needed job well.

Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part 14

Here's the thing about engineers: they know fuck-all about anything that is not engineering. Ask them to address a problem like, oh, say, the poisoning by lead of an entire city, and they're helpless.

Here's the thing about French literature majors: they have what we used to call a liberal arts education.  Before they - or anyone studying sociology, or history or medieval art - can get a degree, they have to show a firm grasp of concepts across all topics, from philosophy to, yes, engineering.

Ask a liberal arts major to address a problem like the poisoning of Flint and she will know exactly where to find the information and the experts to put together a plan that will work.

But Governor Know-Nothing has no interest in solving problems, other than the problem of how to strip the last pennies from Kentucky's working families and turn it over to his billionaire buddies.

Adam Beam at AP:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin wants state colleges and universities to produce more electrical engineers and less French literature scholars.

The first-term Republican governor has a workforce shortage on his hands, and he says part of the problem is the public schools are not turning out degrees of the "things people want."

"There will be more incentives to electrical engineers than french literature majors. There just will," Bevin told reporters this week when announcing his two-year state spending proposal. "All the people in the world that want to study French literature can do so, they are just not going to be subsidized by the taxpayer."

Bevin's philosophy is more concerned with the degrees rather than student loan debt, which has been a major issue in the presidential race. Bevin's budget proposal includes moving Kentucky to a performance-based plan, where colleges and universities would get state tax dollars based on criteria such as graduation rates of certain degree programs.

Yep, pure Know-Nothingism. What Bevin's talking about isn't education; it's corporate drone training. We'll know how to put widgets together perfectly, but we won't know jack shit about running a democracy.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/article57302713.html#storylink=cpy

Cut Administrators and Tuition, Not Faculty

Wonder why UK tuition is so ridiculously high even while tenured faculty is shrinking and temps are teaching what professors should be? That tuition is going to pay for too many non-teaching administrators.

Linda Blackford at the Herald:

Top level administrators are being hired at the University of Kentucky at more than twice the rate of full-time faculty, according to UK employee statistics.

The number of upper-level administrators rose 21 percent from 2007-08 to 2014-15, compared to an 8 percent increase in full-time teaching faculty during the same period. That’s a net gain of 100 people in each category.

Full-time faculty have been augmented by specialist and administrative faculty, bringing the total growth in faculty to 12 percent. Specialist and administrative faculty are researchers, librarians and administrators who also teach in addition to their other duties.

Student enrollment grew about 13 percent at UK during the seven-year period.

When Facts Prove You Wrong, Outlaw the Facts

Because that's all the repugs and freakazoids have: preventing people from finding out how wrong they are about everything.

TPM:

Missouri state Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R) has launched an effort to stop a University of Missouri graduate student from studying the impacts of a state law mandating a 72-hour abortion waiting period passed last year.

He accused the university of breaking a state law that prohibits the use of state funds to "encourage or counsel a woman to have an abortion not necessary to save her life," the Columbia Tribune reported last week.

"The study does not appear to be designed as an objective, unbiased research project, but rather as a marketing aid for Planned Parenthood — one that is funded, in part or in whole, by taxpayer dollars," Schaefer wrote in an October 30 letter to the university's chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin.

In the letter, Schaefer noted that a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis will collect and store the data for the study. As chair of the Missouri senate's interim Committee on the Sanctity of Life, Schaefer investigated Planned Parenthood after edited videos allegedly showed employees at the clinic discuss the sale of fetal tissue. As a result of the state senate's investigation, the University of Missouri has canceled contracts with Planned Parenthood and prohibited medical students from learning about abortions during clinical rotations, according to the Huffington Post.

The university has defended the graduate student's study.

"As the state's research, land-grant institution, we must stay committed to the discovery, dissemination, application and preservation of knowledge to support our mission while abiding by state and federal laws," spokeswoman Mary Jo Banken said in a statement, according to the Huffington Post. "We will continue performing life-saving research in our laboratories while providing the highest quality of educational opportunities to our students."

Mary Kogut, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood's St. Louis chapter, said Schaefer was trying to intimidate researchers.

"I also think what Sen. Schaefer is doing is intimidation of the higher education institutions of our state," Kogut said, according to the Associated Press. "This is about academic freedom for students and the university."

Kevin Drum on Ben Carson's latest lies:

As for facts, I guess they're just chaff thrown out by secular progressives to destroy good Christians.

The Kids Are All Right: "Cocks, Not Glocks"

If only you could get away with this at your open-carry workplace ....

Think Progress:

Students at the University Of Texas at Austin are planning to protest a new law that permits the concealed carry of handguns on campus — with dildos.

The “campus carry” law passed by the Texas legislature and signed by the Governor in June, requires UT Austin and the other campuses in the UT system to allow students to carry guns on campus. It gives the schools some discretion on how to implement the law.

The protest is designed to draw attention to the fact that carrying a dildo to class could be “prohibited expression” under university rules. The rules prohibit “any writing or visual image, or engage in any public performance, that is obscene.”

“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO. Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play,” the organizer, Jessica Jin, wrote.

On Facebook, 1,800 people have registered for the event, which is scheduled for next August when the law goes into effect.


Last week, a tenured professor announced he would give up teaching at UT Austin because he was concerned about his safety in light of the new law.

The law is opposed by University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven. “I’ve spent my whole life around guns. I grew up in Texas hunting. I spent 37 years in the military. I like guns, but I just don’t think having them on campus is the right place,” McRaven told CNN.

Concealed carry is opposed by campus police chiefs. 9 out of 10 police chiefs think the best way to deal with guns on campus is to prohibit them. Only 5 percent of police chiefs think allowing concealed carry on campus would prevent shootings.

Concealed carry on campus is also opposed by 95 percent of university presidents, 94 percent of university faculty and 79 percent of college students.

College campuses also tend have a high level of alcohol and drug use which can lead to “impaired judgment about whether to shoot a gun.”

"Everyone should be able to find clear, reliable, open data on college affordability and value."

The new scorecard is a start, Mr. President.  But it's not quite as comprehensive or as oriented to public good as the Washington Monthly's College Guide. 



Full transcript here.

Jobs for Everyone Disappear Because of Conservatard Racism

Actually, conservatard racism is literally why we can't have anything decent or humane in this country: universal health care, living wages, workers' rights, decent housing, free higher education and all the other social goods enjoyed for decades by people in prosperous European countries are denied to all Americans, including white people, because racists would rather millions of their fellow whites get nothing than a black person get a single penny.

Digby:

I have written for a long time that the fact that the public sector helped build the black middle class over the past four decades is one of the main reasons the right wing hates it so much.  I've heard the racist talk for years when I've stood in line at the DMV and the Post Office or overhearing conversations about "the problem with teachers." (You don't hear it as much about cops and firefighters, but all you have to do is look at the lawsuits against "quotas" to know it exists.)  These people consider government work largely a "welfare program" and resent the fact that public employees have good benefits and decent salaries because they are undeserving. And by "undeserving" they mean black. 

Racism isn't the only explanation for the right's hostility to public sector jobs. But it underlies much of conservatism's ongoing loathing for government which many of them see as catering to the lazy, undeserving poor (even those who work for a living!).  If the government benefits African Americans in some way, regardless of whether it also benefits whites, some people are against it.

"The surest ticket to the middle class"

That is still true, Mr. President, only because all the other tickets to the middle class - like unionized manufacturing jobs - have been systematically destroyed by the mooching rich. And they're already well on the way to destroying the college degree ticket, too.  The only way to save the middle class is to tax the rich out of existence.  But you know that.



Full transcript here.

KY's Murray State 18th in Nation for Best College Value

Centre College may rank 45th in the nation according to the status-above-all U.S. News college rankings, but if you want to know which colleges in Kentucky offer the best value for the money, check out the Washington Monthly, where Centre does not even make the list but Murray State University ranks 18th in the nation.

So, for those who don’t want to wait (or bet) on Washington, we offer our second annual Best Bang for the Buck ranking—our exclusive list of the colleges in America that do the best job of helping non-wealthy students attain marketable degrees at affordable prices. Out of the 1,540 colleges and universities in our broader rankings, only 386 made the cut as Best Bang for the Buck schools. You can see the top 100 starting on page 26 and the rest on our website at washingtonmonthly.com.

To get on our list, colleges had to meet four criteria in the most recent year. First, to make sure they aren’t just catering to the affluent, at least 20 percent of their students must be receiving Pell Grants, which go to students of modest means (typically those with annual household incomes below $50,000). Second, they must have a graduation rate of at least 50 percent—hardly an exacting standard, but a fair one considering that we’re requiring that a fifth of their student body have lower incomes, a demographic that tends to graduate in lower numbers. Third, each school’s actual graduation rate must meet or exceed the rate that would be statistically predicted for that school given the number of lower-income students admitted (among other things, this calculation assures that schools with more than the minimum 20 percent of Pell students aren’t penalized). Fourth, to make sure their graduates are earning enough in the workforce to at least cover their student loans, schools must have a student loan default rate of 10 percent or less.

Once we compiled the list, we applied the “buck” part of the measure by ranking the schools based on their net price of attendance. (Net price is the average tuition that first-time, full-time students from families with an annual income of $75,000 or less actually pay after subtracting the need-based financial aid they receive.)

Transy was the second Kentucky college on the Best Bang for the Buck list at 150, followed by Asbury at 297 and Bellarmine at 306. No other post-secondary institution, public or private, in Kentucky cracked the list of 386.

Please note that Transy, Asbury and Bellarmine manage to provide high value despite being private colleges.  As the Monthly editors point out:

It’s worth pointing out—and giving kudos to—the relative handful of private institutions, including Amherst College and Brigham Young University-Idaho, that made the list. These schools go out of their way to recruit less-affluent students and keep the prices they charge to those students down.

 I'm looking at you, Centre.

"For too many families across the country, paying for higher education is a constant struggle"

Higher education in public colleges and universities should be free, Mr. President. That's the only way to solve the education/economy paradox.




Full transcript here.

One-World Eco-Freaks Take Over Ky University

What's next? Alternatives to coal? Growing food in former tobacco fields? Urban infill?

From the AP:

Murray State University will offer a new graduate-level program in sustainability science this fall. 

The school says the decision to offer a new master's of science degree in sustainability science comes as students show an increased interest in a cleaner earth and a healthier environment.

SNIP

Pervine says the program can be tailored for a variety of interests, including environmental or agricultural sustainability.