Worst Colleges in America by State

Did you know...

• Teaching is a hard job, and when compared to other industrialized nations, American teacher pay is middle-of-the-pack. Maybe that’s what explains a University of Pennsylvania study that found a third of teachers quit the profession within the first 3 years. When you extend the time frame to five years, 46% leave.
• Competition among the country's top universities is so fierce that they are forced to turn away high-performing prospective students. Harvard and Stanford, for instance, turned away a full half of their applicants who scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT. You don't have to worry about them, though. They got in elsewhere.
• Did you know that illiteracy and crime are correlated? One study found that up to two-thirds of students who could not read with proficiency by the end of 4th grade ended up on welfare or in jail. One of the most effective anti-crime efforts is to fund quality educational programs.
• Among industrialized countries, French students are at school the least! A normal school week is 4.5 days, compared to 5 on average. It's common to take a mid-week break by having Wednesdays off. Typically, they are in school 162 days a year, compared to 185 on average for everyone else.
• Boston has the highest concentration of higher ed institutions in the nation. There are over 100 colleges and universities in the Greater Boston area. It also has seven R1 "very high research activity" universities: Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Brandeis, Boston College, Northeastern, and Tufts. This R1 concentration, too, is a record.