This year Montgomery College made top 10 for the first time in Washington Monthly’s list of best 2-year colleges. This honor provides visibility for the college’s contributions to the community and reflects the hard work our staff, faculty, and the county put into running the college.

The Washington Post gave the honor extra weight by noting Montgomery College’s ranking in a story about Washington Monthly’s list.

Washington Monthly prides itself on having a fair, holistic ranking system. They rank schools based on their performance in 3 categories: social mobility, research, and service to the community. Some of the metrics they looked at include students’ salaries 10 years after starting at the college and students’ loan repayment rate. Their ranking system is a response to the prominent U.S. News & World Report ranking, which ranks schools based on measures such as selectivity and graduation rate.

Washington Monthly’s ranking methodology does a good job of taking schools like Montgomery College on their own merits, rather than evaluating them based on criteria appropriate for other kinds of schools. Traditional measures of school performance do not capture essential aspects of Montgomery College’s performance. “Many students have their own success stories,” said George Payne, Vice President of the Workforce Development and Continuing Education at Montgomery College.

The graduation rate is not a good indicator of the college’s performance since MC students have many goals outside of and beyond graduation, such as career enhancement.

Selectivity does not work as an indicator of the college’s performance either. One of the college’s strengths lies in its accessibility to all members of the community, regardless of age, class, and reason for attending school. Selectivity is the opposite of what MC strives for, and its efforts in this area provide hundreds of students with the social mobility more selective institutions would not.

“Many students have their own success stories,” said George Payne, Vice President of the Workforce Development and Continuing Education at Montgomery College.

Many surveys and rankings do not take into account the “human element” integral to Montgomery College’s value for the students and the community. “Real students’ lives are being changed because they’ve come here,” said Marcus Rosano, Media Relations Director at Montgomery College.