If you have a college student in your family--or went to college yourself---you may be pretty familiar with the many, many lists of college rankings that pop up. But typically, the lists only apply to four-year institutions. As StateImpact Ohio's Amy Hansen reports, the think tank behind a new rating system out today also looked at the economic returns from community colleges.
The Brookings Institution's new higher education ranking system is based on so-called "value added" scores. That's the difference between how much a college expects a student to earn after graduation and how much the student actually makes.
The researchers also examined the rates of student loan repayment when they ranked thousands of two and four year colleges nationwide.
When it comes to Ohio's community colleges, lead researcher Jonathan Rothwell found those that fared best--including Northeast Ohio's Lakeland Community College and Lorain Community College--all had some common denominators.
"They teach a curriculum that is heavily focused on fields like nursing, healthcare, IT, sort of engineering technology, that may be useful for Ohio's manufacturing industries," he said.
Among Ohio's four year schools, Marietta College, John Carroll University, and Kenyon College ranked highest on Brookings' list.
But critics said the ratings have some flaws, including the use of its reliance on self-reported student data and defining success strictly from an economic standpoint.