<p>I don’t know of any reliable source for this information. The National Survey of Student Engagement promotes some criteria, but even here, the evidence that students who do what they advocate end up better educated is slim. The criteria are also weighted towards traditional liberal arts, and do not translate well to engineering, science, or technical degrees.</p>
<p>One could try to compare similar colleges on output measures- % graduates who get advanced degrees, mean incomes, professional achievements,… but this data is hard to come by. </p>
<p>One could compare scores on standard tests MCAT, LSAT, GRE. After normalizing for admission SAT scores, these would be a good test of how much those who took the tests had learned in college about the subjects included on these exams. However, lots of people don’t take the exams, even at elite colleges where most students get advanced degrees. So differences in scores across colleges could be dominated by selection for who took the exam, rather than differences in educational attainment.</p>
<p>Absent any of the above, people are left with opinion, and no data.</p>
<p>From Rama’s comments, note how experts in engineering education felt poorly prepared to comment on the quality of undergraduate education at even a small number of peer institutions. The faculty members understood that even knowing how well they were doing at home would require a careful study.</p>
<p>It always amuses me when people with little or no expertise in higher education can make fine distinctions about the quality of education at college A vs B, perhaps never having so much as visited either.</p>