<p>Sure, I believe that the US News rankings have value. I don’t believe that they’re perfect or that its the sole authority on the relative assessment of college excellence, but I do believe that certain colleges are clearly more excellent than others, so assessing that difference is a very valid enterprise. I also believe that more excellent colleges and universities distinguish themselves from average schools by attracting better students, retaining and graduating those students at higher rates, and having smaller classes and faculty-to-student ratios, so that data is useful to me. </p>
<p>I find small differences between the rankings of different schools or rankings of the same school in different years to be relatively meaningless, so I tend to be fairly understanding toward US News’ need to tweak the criteria from year to year so that they aren’t publishing an identical list each year. That’s what they need to do to sell magazines. Does their subjective tweaking render the whole process of rating colleges invalid? No - you’ve got to realize that everything you read has been subjectively doctored to increase its reader appeal. That NY Times account of the press conference that you recently read - was it totally objective and factual? Of course not - a verbatim transcript of the press conference would have been totally objective, but you’d have no interest in reading that. The Times writer attributed a weight to different topics and comments, then assembled his or her account of the press conference in order to create a story line of his or her own design that might make you more inclined to read it. US News provides useful data and then, similarly, crafts it into a storyline. So use it in whatever way you find value, and “caveat emptor.”</p>