State schools do a better job of elevating lower income students, says journalist 

Washington Monthly’s editor-in-chief, Paul Glastris, said Friday that state colleges and universities tend to do a better job of helping lower-income students.

Glastris, who joined “Rising” to discuss the magazine’s Washington Monthly’s 2018 College Guide and Rankings, said half of the universities and colleges that make up the list’s top 30 schools are state college and universities. 

“State schools do a better job frankly of elevating students of modest means — they put out a ton of research, they create a lot of Ph.D. students, a lot of ideas and their students serve the country,” Glastris told Hill.TV co-hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton.

While some college rankings lean heavily towards private and ivy league institutions, the Washington Monthly takes a different approach.

The magazine ranks 4-year schools based on their contribution to the public good in three main categories, including social mobility, research and service or the ability to encourage students to give back to their country.

“We’re looking at what schools are doing right by the taxpayer, what schools are doing right by America,” Glastris told Hill.TV.

The top five national universities on the list were Harvard University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Yale University, while California schools like the University of California San Diego and University of California Los Angeles were among the top ten. 

Glastris also praised California’s education system in particular, saying the state has made a significant effort from the start to make higher education more affordable for students of all backgrounds.

“This is a legacy of how the California system was put together. They made a determination early on and they’ve stuck with it that student of modest means go if not entirely free, very cheaply,” the editor said.

In light of soaring student debt, California lawmakers introduced a number of bills last year aimed at making college more affordable, and last year, San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to offer free community college tuition for all local residents regardless of need.  

— Tess Bonn