Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Eat your heart out, U.S. News

At Radar, which is hard to keep track of, what with folding and relaunching three or four times, Maer Roshan and co. have come up with a good idea for a feature piece: the worst colleges in America. Their teaser line on the article: "Twisted teachers! Suicidal students! Courses on 'Silence!' and 'Leisure.' Come along on our exclusive tour of the worst colleges in the country." Pretty cool.

Wow, California State University-Chico comes in for a beating, but hard to argue they don't deserve it: "While Chico is the most notorious party college on the planet -- 69 students were arrested on St. Patrick's Day last year -- on average, a full 15 percent of them actually manage to graduate in four years." (By the way, that sentence is sic: I have a strong view that the antecedent of "them" can't be inside em-dashes. Moreover, there's an unintended implication that we're talking about 15 percent of those 69 arrested students rather than the student body.)

Bennington College gets laurels for Worst Trust-Fund Baby College. That happens to be true, in my anecdotal experience. The tuition is $44,000. Need I say more? Worst Ivy goes to Cornell, where a student gets quoted with this zinger: "'I haven't overheard a single intellectual conversation in three years, unless it was between Indian or Asian students,' writes an architecture major on Students Review." Ouch. Worst college of 'em all? University of Bridgeport, as if Bridgeport didn't have enough bad press.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:57 PM

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