“We rate schools based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country),” the magazine states.
The Washington Monthly rankings often provide unexpected results, seeing famous private institutions perform lower than lesser-known schools “based on what they are doing for the country—by improving social mobility, producing research, and promoting public service,” the magazine says.
HSU joins several other California State Universities on the list, including two—CSU Stanislaus and CSU San Bernardino—that ranked in the top 10. The rankings are made based on a sample of 1,406 total colleges which includes public, private nonprofit, and for-profit colleges.
“California State campuses are located throughout the upper ranks of our master’s university rankings,” writes Kevin Carey in Washington Monthly. “They vary in how successfully they help students graduate and pay back loans, but their common thread is a high population of Pell-eligible students and unusually low net prices for students who aren’t well-to-do—the legacy of California’s historical commitment to accessible higher education, one that remains threatened by economic and budgetary pressures in the Golden State.”
Find the Washington Monthly’s guide and rankings here.