The CCAP/Forbes Rankings

The CCAP (Center for College Affordability and Productivity)/Forbes rankings are rather different from the rest, being emphatically based on outcomes rather than spending.

One quarter of the weighting of these rankings is for student satisfaction, based on scores from the ratemyprofessors site, another quarter on graduate success derived from Who's Who in America and payscale.com, a quarter from current students success -- graduation rates and winners of national student awards, a fifth for the debt incurred by students and five per cent for faculty quality.

Richard Vedder the director of CCAP claims that the rankings are relatively difficult to manipulate. Up to a point this is true. I cannot see much that anyone could do about Who's Who. But if these rankings ever overtook the USNWR rankings there could well be a lot of fiddling with graduation rates and innovative financial aid packages .

Anyway, the overall top five are .

1. US Military Aacadamy
2. Princeton
3. Caltech
4. Williams College
5. Harvard


The top five best value colleges are

1. Berea College, Kentucky
2. New College of Florida
3. US Miltary Academy
4. US Air Force Academy
5. University of Wyoming


The top five national research universities are:

1. Princeton
2. Caltech
3. Harvard
4. Yale
5. Stanford