It’s an age-old question for many students, families, and taxpayers: Which college is the best? Different ranking systems have attempted to quantify the value of higher education in a simple roundup list for decades. But a new approach outlined in this report from Third Way shifts the focus to institutions that offer a strong return on investment for students with the greatest financial need: providing real economic mobility.
Third Way first introduced the Economic Mobility Index (EMI) in 2022 as an approach to assess colleges and universities. Distinct from traditional rankings and measures of institutional value, the approach seeks to highlight institutions that are fulfilling higher education’s purpose of promoting economic mobility for their students. That means not only serving students from low-income backgrounds well and setting them up for economic success, but also enrolling significant proportions of students with high financial need in the first place.
The latest report recreates the EMI for 2023 using data from the College Scorecard released this spring.