HIGH LIFE - Yale, Swarthmore Rate Tops as Schools for Undergraduates

Yale University and Swarthmore College were named America’s best undergraduate schools for the second consecutive year, according to recent U.S. News and World Report rankings.

Yale was tagged as best national university in the third annual assessment by the magazine, followed by Princeton, Harvard, Caltech, Duke and Stanford. Swarthmore won honors as best national liberal arts college, ahead of Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley.

In new categories, Harvey Mudd College, which along with Pomona College is part of the Claremont Colleges, was tabbed as the best school specializing in engineering, and Babson College in Massachusetts won honors as the best business specialty school.

In the national university category, the UC system did well. UC Berkeley was ranked 13th and UCLA 16th. Plus, UC San Diego was included in a list of “up-and-coming” schools selected by college presidents and administrators, along with Arizona State, Carnegie-Mellon, Emory, Rutgers and the University of Arizona.

San Diego State was named as one of the rising colleges and universities in the West, as were Nevada Las Vegas and Western Washington University.

The schools were ranked on the basis of five categories: quality of student body (based on SAT scores and the ratio of students accepted to total number of applicants), faculty quality, academic reputation, financial resources and ability to retain and graduate students.

The magazine said it used statistical measures for each category except academic reputation, which was determined by polling college presidents, deans of academic affairs and deans of admissions.

A recent federal study indicates an unprecedented decline in the percentage of Americans pursuing a college education, reports the October issue of NEA Today, the newspaper of the National Education Assn.

The proportion had been on the rise since the turn of the century. The study found that four years after graduation, 15% of the high school graduating class of ’72 had college diplomas. By 1986, only 7% of the class of ’82 had graduated from college. Two possible reasons: higher tuition and higher college dropout rates.

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