<p>I agree of course, and have conveyed my sentiments to Morse on several occasions. His response is that the stat would be too hard to calculate for the entire universe of schools on which USNews must gather data.</p>
<p>A little-appreciated aspect of the USNews rankings is that the magazine has no government mandate or “educational police” to require the submission of information, or its submission in any particular format.</p>
<p>That said, USNews is largely responsible for development of the “Common Data Set.” Many people have forgotten what it used to be like before the CDS. Most colleges had a major stake in denying access to what they used to consider “confidential” information, and tried to make it as difficult as possible to compare schools on an objective basis.</p>