Washington Monthly, an independent Washington, DC, social research magazine, has ranked Tacoma Community College (TCC) 17th among the community colleges in the country, and number one in Washington State. The purpose of the list, according to Washington Monthly editors, is to determine for citizens and policymakers which of the nation’s service-oriented schools are “laying the foundation for the kind of nation we want to become.” The magazine measured and quantified how well individual colleges and universities were “meeting their public obligations in the areas of research, service, and social mobility,” ranking schools based on the results. The editors explained that “Instead of asking what a college could do for you, we asked, “What are colleges doing for the country?” and using criteria that indicate a college’s commitment to service and creating opportunities for upward mobility for its students.

This is the first year that Washington Monthly has ranked community colleges. According to the Association of Community and Technical Colleges (ACCT), there are 1,166 community colleges in the United States.

The nation’s community colleges were rated on six measures that included active and collaborative learning; student effort; academic challenge; student-faculty interaction; support for learning; and graduation rate. TCC’s 63 percent graduation rate was in the top six of the community colleges that made the top 50.

For more information, visit http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/introduction_a_different_kind_2.php .