A new way to rate colleges Did you know that the University of Cincinnati has more social prestige than Sarah Lawrence, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr? Or that the quality of the faculty at Kutztown State College in Kutztown, Pa., is higher than at Smith, Oberlin and Yale? These are just a few of the amazing aperçus served up in a new $7.95 guide to U.S. colleges published last month by the New American Library and prepared by veteran Guide Author Gene R. Hawes. Billed as “A New Kind of College Guide that Reports on What You Want to Know Most—and First—About Colleges,” the 416-page paperback modestly describes itself as a “revolutionary” advance in the college-guide biz.
Take the delicate question of social prestige—a “perfectly understandable” concern, Hawes assures, since “associating with persons of high social status is of course widely taken to be good in itself.” Of course. To determine how high a school ranks in social prestige, Hawes has simply counted the alma maters of those listed in the Social Register. Thus, with 94 listings, Cincinnati outranks Sarah Lawrence, which has 40. He cautions that his prestige ratings may be unfair to women’s colleges, since the Social Register omits data on college for many matrons. The most prestigious ten, according to Hawes, are fairly predictable: Harvard (4,039 listings); Yale (3,755); Princeton (3,344); Pennsylvania (1,373); Virginia (755); Williams (748); the Berkeley campus of the University of California (560); Stanford (521); Dartmouth (489); Cornell (470). Hawes’ own alma mater, Columbia, ranks eleventh (with 452).
Then there is the question of faculty quality. Hawes offers a ranking of average or median academic salaries, “one very basic indicator of the college’s academic quality.” On this novel scale, Kutztown’s median of $21,600 lords it over Oberlin’s $16,700, Smith’s $17,500 and Yale’s $20,000. Harvard is second in faculty “quality,” since it pays a median salary of $27,200, while the California Institute of Technology is third, with $25,700. No. 1 is the University of Alaska, which pays top intellectual dollar, an average of $27,800, to lure academics to far-off Fairbanks.
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