UC schools get high marks in survey

No, it's not the widely followed US News list - it's Washington Monthly's ranking of which colleges and universities are doing the best and worst in the areas of research, service, and social mobility. In other words, how well do they meet their public obligations?

It wasn't long ago that the colleges annually anointed as "America's Best" by U.S. News & World Report-- Harvard, Princeton, and Yale--served as fertile breeding grounds for future masters of the financial universe. History majors from New Haven could make the hour-long drive along the Long Island Sound to the hedge funds of Greenwich, Connecticut. The Harvard-to-Wall-Street pipeline was open full bore. Then all those smart people destroyed their own companies and almost brought the global economy down with them. The credit markets collapsed, demand for goods and services plummeted, and millions of innocent workers lost their jobs. Today's college graduates face the worst labor market in generations.

Not surprisingly, private schools tend to do the best on the U.S. News list; public schools top the Washington Monthly list.

1)Univ. of California, San Diego
2)University of California, Berkeley
3)UCLA
4)Stanford University
5)University of Texas, Austin
6)University of California, Davis
7)University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
8)Syracuse University
9)Harvard University
10)College of William and Mary

About the UC results:

The University of California stands out--five of our top eleven universities are part of the UC system, with San Diego joined by the campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis, and Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, feckless voters and incompetent politicians have spent the last several decades running California into a financial ditch. When the recent recession arrived, higher education took a mighty hit, forcing the university to furlough staff and impose an astonishing 32 percent tuition hike. It's terrible to watch a wealthy state like California dismantle one of the world's great university systems. We hope they fix matters before UC schools begin to slide down in our rankings.