Washington Monthly's 'Best Colleges' list

>>> the news is getting worse for america's college grads. pew research center reports student debt now affects one in five households. to top it all off many of these students can't afford to pay back loans, 9% who began repaying in 2009 and 2010 have defaulted on them. washington monthly is out with a new list of the top colleges and universities in america based no not only on costs but also on social mobility and civic engagement . only one of u.s. news and world reports top ten stanford university made it to washington mon monthly's top ten. yale didn't crack the top 40 . bring in editor paul classist, the college edition features a list of best bang for the buck colleges and best colleges for our country. paul , thanks for being back with us.

>> pleasure to be here.

>> i was looking at this list and one of the things that jumped out is in list 14 of the top 20 are public universities . " u.s. news & world report " has none of their top 20 are public universities . how did you come up with this list?

>> well, "u.s. news," their measures are basically how much money you spend on professors, how selective you are, how many kids you don't let in, measures of prestige, reputation, money. ours is based on what colleges do for the buildings of dollars of taxpayer money that we invest. how good are they to the country. we say are they places where low-income kids can get in and graduate? are they places that produce a lot of ph.d.s and research that drive the economy? and do they encourage giving back to the country? are there kids going to the paste corps, into americorps? those are the three basic measures, and do they do it for a good price.

>> well, you know, on that question of price point, looking at that point about 14 of the top 20 best values being public schools . you know, you have a couple campuses in california, michigan, you have washington, wisconsin. these are sort of generally recognized as the great public research universities in this country, but that value, that question of price, really only applies if you're lucky enough to live in that state. i can think of growing up in massachusetts we had harvard and private schools that were really expensive. we had the university of massachusetts which i love but a lot of people were trying to go out of state to michigan, unc, they're paying a lot more if they're going there. is it much of a value if you're not lucky enough to live in the states.

>> if you're going to be paying out of sate tuition, it is a lot of money, but for most of the campuses, most of the kids are in state. even for the cost of out of state if you average those costs out and even with the big tuition increases we've seen at places like the university of california system , these places are still a better value than a lot of the private schools .

>> paul , how did you factor in the value of networking? a lot of people go to college because of the people they're going to meet and maybe some of those people they're going to end up working with or for. how does that factor into your ratings?

>> so we only look at data that's available and that's solid. we don't factor in networking. for a lot of people networking is the whole point.

>> right.

>> and whether they learn anything or not is of little consequence. look, the problem is u.s. news is they're trying to measure something for which there is no data yet. we don't know how much learning goes on. we don't know yet, although it could be gotten, what people make when they get out, and are they working in their fields. if you had evidence -- if you had data like that, you could really do a measure that says which of the schools are really the best.

>> all right. well, paul , thanks for that info.

>> thank you.

>> still ahead, toure looks at the debates and gets all one shining moment on us. wharf that means. eat your heart out, jim nance . [