College Rankings Reformed notes that schools aren’t ranked by the quality of education they provide:
But the U.S. News ranking system is deeply flawed. Instead of focusing on the fundamental issues of how well colleges and universities educate their students and how well they prepare them to be successful after college, the magazine’s rankings are almost entirely a function of three factors: fame, wealth, and exclusivity. They directly or indirectly account for 95 percent of a school’s ranking, as Table 1 on page 3 reveals.
