Best Colleges for Rural America
The Best Colleges for Rural America reveal how some of higher ed’s biggest returns are happening in the country’s most…
August 2026
admin The Return of the Native
Nicholas Lemann’s family history illuminates what it means to be Jewish in America and illuminates how we choose our ethnic…
Mary Todd Lincoln Reconsidered
In May 1875, almost precisely 10 years after an assassin’s bullet felled the 16th president,...
A Note on Methodology: Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars
To establish the set of colleges included in the rankings, we started with the 1,950...
America’s Best Hispanic-Serving Colleges
In a time of enrollment crunch, universities have an existential obligation to serve Hispanic students, the one population that’s growing.
After the Closures
The universities that educate the majority of Americans are struggling. How college closures will reengineer America’s class system.
How Online Algorithms Rig the College Search Process
Search engines steer students with fewer resources toward schools with worse outcomes, many of them predatory for-profits.
A Different Kind of College Ranking
When you stop grading by snob appeal, the truly excellent ones shine. Plus, our new ranking of the best colleges…
America’s Best Colleges for Research
The best research universities driving American innovation aren’t just in blue states—and neither is the damage from Trump’s research cuts.
Fear and Loathing in Palo Alto
Theo Baker’s debut book is a film-worthy investigation of Stanford’s culture of fraud. But his disdain for the tech bros…