A high-minded new ranking.

Paul Caron draws attention to this ranking in Washington Monthly, which attempts to evaluate colleges from the perspective of what they give to society:

The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service. We designed our evaluation system accordingly.

This is nicely high-minded of them. But is this helpful? And is the methodology right?