New College of Florida was ranked No. 10 among the nation’s liberal arts colleges – and first among public liberal arts schools – in Washington Monthly magazine’s “2015 College Rankings” issue.
Washington Monthly is unique among the prominent college guides because it takes a different approach to rankings:
“This guide asks: Are we getting the most for our money?” its editors said on the magazine’s website.
We rank four-year colleges in America on three measures that would make the whole system better, if only schools would compete on them.
The first is upward mobility: Are schools enrolling and graduating students of modest means and charging them a reasonable price?
The second is research: Are they preparing undergraduates to earn PhDs, and creating the new technologies and ideas that will drive economic growth and advance human knowledge?
The third is service: Are schools encouraging their students to give back to the country by joining the military or the Peace Corps, or at least letting them use their work-study money to do community service?
Washington Monthly noted that New College ranks second in the country for the percent of federal work-study funds spent on community service, and ninth in the country for the percentage of graduates going to attain doctoral degrees.
The magazine also directly cites New College in its discussion of the value of liberal arts colleges.
“New College of Florida, a rare public liberal arts college, also makes our top twenty… In a time when researchers are increasingly questioning how much undergraduates actually learn while they’re in college, liberal arts schools often provide the intensive, personalized learning environments where students thrive.”
New College placed ahead of many notable national liberal arts colleges, including Oberlin College, Wellesley College, Wesleyan College and Williams College.
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Contact: David Gulliver, Media Relations Coordinator, 487-4154, [email protected]
New College of Florida is a national leader in the arts and sciences and is the State of Florida’s designated honors college for the liberal arts. Consistently ranked among the top public liberal arts colleges in America by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes and The Princeton Review, New College attracts highly motivated, academically talented students from 40 states and 16 foreign countries. A higher proportion of New College students receive Fulbright awards than graduates from virtually all other colleges and universities.