^I think there’s been a little bit of straw tossed into Bruni’s argument. I don’t recall him saying that elite colleges don’t matter. Studies have shown that for students from low SES backgrounds they can make a great deal of difference. I think he’s only saying that USNews does a poor job of justifying why one should be ranked above another. The usual argument supporting USNews nearly always comes back to some variant of, “it supports what I already believe, therefore, it must be reliable.”