Monmouth College President Clarence Wyatt says you have to take “all rankings with a huge grain of salt” but he takes pride in the tremendous jump his school took in the 2016 Washington Monthly College Rankings.
The Washington Monthly leap is special he says because it measures what happens over the course of a students’ college career, putting an emphasis on “value added” and “social mobility.”
Wyatt tells Galesburg’s Evening News on WGIL that they take the most pride in is graduating students at a rate higher than expected based on demographic factors.
“That shows the dedication of our faculty and staff in terms of taking these young people who have all the talent in the world but maybe haven’t had all the breaks in the world before they come to us and helping them really begin to realize that potential or a phrase that we like to use at Monmouth is ‘free the possible.”
According to the Washington Monthly Report 37% of Monmouth College students are first-generation, 43% receive Federal Pell Grants with a graduation rate of 53%.
Rival Knox College has an overall ranking of 13 and bests Monmouth in terms of median earnings 10 years after graduation and graduation rate but Monmouth has a larger share of their students who are first generation or receive Pell grants.
