<p>OK, I think colleges should encourage students to explore academic options. I think that colleges that force students to apply to a particular school, or even worse, a particular major, do their students an important disservice. Not everyone agrees with me on this point. Some people don’t care. If I think it is important, then I would find it hard to accept a “ranking” that failed to take this into account. Someone who does not care would find this completely unimportant, and would think it distorting to include this in a ranking. There is no way to quantify flexibility of major choice, but it is easy to describe.</p>
<p>Now how could one create a ranking that is correct for someone who thinks this counts and for someone who does not?</p>
<p>There are so many things going on for students at college that the notion of reducing the experience to a single number is just silly. So USNews fails before it starts. </p>
<p>The problem is not that the factors or the weights used by USNews are wrong, although people love to argue about them. The problem is that you cannot produce a single ranking formula that reflects the wide range of opinions of what counts.</p>