I have no issues with peer assessment. In fact, I think it’s essential for the reason that us news is so prone to being gamed by institutions submitting their own data; the peer assessment is perhaps the only metric that can’t be fudged because prestige and reputation takes generations to build. My issue with US News is the idea that a school like Berkeley — a school with near-mythical prestige that took more than 150 years to build — is all the sudden less prestigious than schools like, let’s say ucla or northwestern, because of graduation rate without taking into account rigor. There should be a disclaimer that says, “this is not a measure of prestige, please see our global rankings.”