First, a look at colleges from the social side, as the University of Wisconsin-Madison is rated as the nation’s top party school.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison topped the list of the nation’s party schools Monday despite a decade-long effort by school officials to reduce its reputation for heavy drinking.
UW-Madison has ranked among the top party schools on the annual Princeton Review report in 13 out of the 14 years it has compiled the list and was No. 3 a year ago. Meanwhile, Brigham Young University was tops among “stone cold sober” schools for the eighth straight year.
[…]
The other top party schools are: Ohio University in Athens; Lehigh University in Pennsylvania; University of California-Santa Barbara; State University of New York at Albany; Indiana University-Bloomington; University of Mississippi; University of Iowa; University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Loyola University New Orleans; Tulane University in New Orleans; University of Georgia; Penn State University; West Virginia University; The University of Texas-Austin; University of Tennessee-Knoxville; University of New Hampshire; University of Florida; Louisiana State University; University of Maryland-College Park.
Alas! No love for my alma mater, Texas A&M.
On the other hand, A&M did quite well in another interesting study (hat tip to INDC Journal) which attempted to rank schools by their relative contributions to America.
The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service. We designed our evaluation system accordingly.
A&M came in at a tidy little #7. Sweet. Now, if only we could get back to that level in football.