The National Council of Trustees and Alumni has come out with its own list of college rankings. Very different from the U.S. News and World Reports list which ranks on things like alumni giving and the athletic offerings, the new list provides rankings for schools based on “their general education curricula: the core courses aimed at providing a strong foundation of knowledge.”

When I first saw an article about the rankings I thought “Yes! Finally a system that doesn’t take endowments into consideration,” however upon closer examination I found some oddities interesting things about the rankings. Just for kicks I searched for Kenyon College on the list–sure that my school its liberal arts curriculum would get a passing grade–and was surprised to see that Kenyon got an F! Here is their reasoning:

• No economics course required earns an F BUT “no credit given for Mathematics because the Quantitative Reasoning requirement may be fulfilled with economics and science courses”.
• “No credit given for Natural or Physical Science because the Natural Sciences Distribution requirement may be fulfilled with Mathematics courses.”
• “No credit given for Foreign Language because students may fulfill the Second Language requirement with elementary-level study”

Kenyon has one of the stringent language requirements I’ve heard of! The KILM (Kenyon Intensive Language Model) requires class meetings every day for 1 hour, plus class meetings 4 nights a week for 1 hour!

Here’s a link to the site: http://whatwilltheylearn.com/

Just as a means of comparison, UT- Knoxville received a B and WKU received a C

Any thoughts on the rankings?