Bending the Curve (Editor's Note) (College Education Trends‪)‬

In this issue we proudly present the Washington Monthly's annual College Guide, including our very own College Rankings. As in previous years, our intent is to offer an alternative to U.S. News & World Report's rankings, which we find objectionable for a number of reasons (see "A Different Kind of College Ranking," page 15). Our approach is fundamentally different from U.S. News and similar guides: instead of focusing on what colleges can do for you, we ask what colleges are doing for the country--by improving social mobility, producing research, and promoting public service. Want to know how your alma mater stacks up? Check out the rankings--they begin on page 59. Our ultimate aim is to use this information to change the way people think about colleges and universities, the first step toward changing the institutions themselves. And make no mistake: changes--big changes--are necessary, and they're coming. In the last couple of years Americans have learned the hard way that long-term trends that seem unsustainable often turn out to be just that. Real estate prices cannot climb faster than income year after year without eventually crashing and taking down the economy. Carbon cannot be pumped into the atmosphere indefinitely without inviting environmental catastrophe. Health care costs cannot continually rise faster than GDP without weakening businesses and bankrupting the government.