Washington Monthly recognizes MC as top baccalaureate college

Sept. 15, 2020

Washington monthly college rankings 2020 magazine cover

In its annual College Guide and Rankings, Washington Monthly ranked Maryville College No. 8 in its list of “2020 Bachelor’s Colleges” – up from No. 16 last year – and No. 34 in its “Best Bang for the Buck Colleges – South” rankings.

The College Guide is included in the September/October 2020 issue of Washington Monthly, a bimonthly nonprofit magazine that covers United States politics and government.

Washington Monthly ranks colleges and universities on “how well they serve the country as a whole – by recruiting and graduating non-wealthy students, encouraging student activism, and producing research and technologies that create high-paying jobs and address threats like climate change,” according to the description of the 2020 rankings. “These new rankings are especially important now, with mass unemployment, the inequalities exposed by COVID-19, and the nationwide protests against racial injustice.”

In its list of bachelor’s colleges, the publication ranks baccalaureate colleges – four-year institutions that award almost exclusively bachelor’s degrees – based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility, research and promoting public service. College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Mo., topped the list of 248 schools.

Maryville College ranked 34th out of 207 colleges in the publication’s “Best Bang for the Buck Colleges – South” list. The rankings include an “exclusive list of schools ranked according to how well they help non-wealthy students attain marketable degrees at affordable prices,” according to the website. “The list is created by isolating the social mobility metrics from the main rankings of four-year institutions.”

Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200  students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”