U.S. News & World Report released the 2010 "Best Colleges for Service Learning." Who is on the list, and what were the criteria under consideration? And how in the world did they rank colleges on service learning?

Upon a quick inspection of the report, which can be viewed here, it's nice to see that 10 out of the 31 listed schools are in the Midwest, and Michigan's two largest and most respected universities, Michigan State University and University of Michigan, both made the cut. But don't feel bad if your college isn't on the list. That's because U.S. News and World Report doesn't explain how they came to these conclusions in the first place!

As for the particular methodology used to assess service learning criteria, unfortunately the site is free and clear of such pertinent info. If you go here you can take a glance at their various rankings and methodologies, but while they give methodology for best values, ethnic diversity, up-and-coming, etc., there is nothing on how they determine service learning.  But you can get a glimpse into their methods for determining best colleges overall.

So it leaves us wondering: Were these colleges great at producing quality service learning with their students, or did they merely have the highest percentage of courses available that had a service learning component in place?

My guess is that the latter was taken, although I can't be sure. If they were ranking based on whether or not a school was using high quality service learning standards this would be quite the extensive undertaking. Plus, most of the colleges are HUGE universities (most of the Midwest picks were in the Big 10). Sure, large universities may have more resources, but does that mean their students are affecting change in their communities more effectively? I don't think so.

Go ahead, call me biased - my university wasn't on the list. Maybe that's why I'm so interested. But at Grand Valley, we know we have some ground to cover; that's why service learning is in our 2008-2013 Strategic Plan. Already in 2010, I can see the progress we've made. And I agree with the Strategic Plan - let's focus on creating meaningful, high-quality service learning, regardless of whether or not we make a list based on potentially superficial data.

Just saying.

Anyway, I have an email into the USNWR editor asking for methodology. I'll update this post if I hear anything back.