Our Definition of a ‘Top University’ Might Be Completely Wrong
The metrics we use to define academic excellence have never really accounted for, well, women.
A few months ago, Newsweek and Gender Fair published a ranking of the best colleges in the United States. It could've been any other college ranking, there was just one twist — it focused on women. Harvard, which almost always occupies a top spot in U.S. (and global) college and university rankings, clocked in at number 751.
“The college experience should empower every student to reach their full potential, and for women, that means attending an institution that prioritizes leadership opportunities, equitable pay practices, campus safety and meaningful pathways to success,” wrote Jennifer H. Cunningham, Newsweek’s editor-in-chief.
Cunningham noted that women’s colleges — like Smith College, which ranked 129th, and Barnard College, which came in at 53 — have long championed these values, “creating environments where female students can flourish without barriers.” But many coeducational institutions, she added, have also made strides in fostering gender equity, “ensuring that women have access to the resources, support and opportunities they need to excel.”
Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia earned the top spot in the inaugural ranking, scoring particularly highly on fostering leadership skills and providing a safe environment for its students. Others in the top five included Thomas Jefferson University in Pennsylvania, St. Catherine University in Minnesota, and Herzing University–Madison and Alverno College, which are both in Wisconsin.
Ginanne Brownell
Progress, yes, but…
My first thought upon reading this list was — “Progress!” It is heartening, after all, to see an attempt — however imperfect — to center women’s experiences. It’s encouraging to see women’s safety, ambition, and long-term outcomes referenced as core measures of institutional success.
For once, the question is not merely whether women can gain access to a high-quality educational space, but also whether that space is designed with women in mind. Women first, system second.
And yet, almost immediately, my sense of optimism was overtaken by something else. As I scrolled through the list, I realized that many of the schools that excel by these “woman-friendly” measures are not the same schools that have long dominated traditional rankings of academic prestige in the United States. The Ivy League schools — Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell — so often held up as as shorthand for academic brilliance, all tie as laggard in 751st spot. (A position held by many other schools in this ranking, too.)
What this tells us, is not simply that different methodologies produce different outcomes. It also tells us that the dominant model of academic success — the one that has shaped our collective understanding of what a “top school” looks like and even indeed what it means to be successful — has never factored in success measures with women at the center.
Josie Cox
A model of excellence
One of the most widely cited rankings of American colleges is the one compiled by U.S. News & World Report. Its most recent “Best National Universities” list awards the top five spots to Princeton University, MIT, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Yale University. No surprises there.
But wouldn’t it be nice if there were alignment? If our definition of the best colleges for women did not diverge so sharply from our definition of the best colleges, with no qualifier? If the qualities that make an institution prestigious were also those that make it equitable, supportive, and safe?
Amy-Willard Cross, the founder of Gender Fair, agrees. It’s “distressing,” she says, that there’s not more overlap between this latest list and the lists we’ve traditionally referenced when determining what makes a college or university good.
Looking at some of the institutions that have traditionally scored highest in rankings, Cross says that many of them “seem to have accommodated women [by following the idea of] ‘just add women and stir.’” In other words, she adds, there don’t seem to have been “any significant changes to the recipe” — changes that would make an environment more supportive and accommodating for women.
Rankings, of course, do more than reflect reality. They contribute to creating it. They shape where students apply, how families allocate resources, and what colleges themselves choose to prioritize.
For decades, the metrics that have dominated — things like faculty prestige and the publications where these faculty have published, admissions selectivity, alumni giving, endowment size — have rewarded a particular model of excellence, one rooted in tradition and scarcity.
What they have not adequately measured is whether women feel secure on campus, whether they are encouraged into positions of leadership, or whether they graduate into a world that treats their ambitions as equal to those of their male peers. As Cross notes, even at elite institutions where women in many cases make up roughly half of graduates, “the tenured faculty does not reflect the student population,” and “there tend to be significant pay gaps.”
As so many women who have gone to university will tell you, these are things women don’t just think about some of the time, they are things women think about all the time. Data from 2025, show that over 26% of undergraduate women had experienced rape or sexual assault on campus.
Of course, I’m not saying that the traditionally top-ranked schools are categorically failing women. But facts are facts and there’s no question they were established with women’s experiences in mind. Many of these institutions only began admitting women in significant numbers in the latter half of the twentieth century. And have they gotten better? Of course they have. Thousands have identity groups, cultural organizations, women-only dorms and other spaces, and have expanded their thinking to include, well everyone. But culture, like policy, takes time to rebuild.
There’s another difficult truth too: When Newsweek publishes a list like this, it stands out as the anomaly, while those traditional lists — the expected and accepted rankings — remain the default. This ranking has its merit, the voice in our head might say, but we know which list is the “real one.”
What is success?
All of this forces a reckoning.
As Cross suggests, “perhaps the golden brand of prestige institutions outweighs the experiences of young women” — a tradeoff that becomes uncomfortable once we name it.
And if that is the case, what, exactly, are we rewarding when we declare a college to be “the best”? Intellectual rigor? Career outcomes? Social mobility? Or are we — awkward as it might be to admit — rewarding a legacy of exclusivity — one that continues to reproduce itself under the guise of merit, and a can’t-touch-it brand name? One that might not truly take the time to reflect on its own shortcomings?
If the answer changes depending on whether we are talking about men or women, then the problem is not merely with the rankings. It is with the underlying definition of success itself.
Until those definitions begin to converge — until a school cannot be considered excellent without also being equitable, safe, and deeply aware of the lived experiences of a group of individuals who frequently constitute half of its student body — I’ll view lists less like a celebration of progress, and more like an indictment. An indictment not of a particular institution, but of a system that still so often fails to ask the right question.
