All four components of the “learning environment” rating are based on student surveys. The numbers therefore reflect students’ satisfaction with their own school’s learning environment. Nothing wrong with that (it is interesting!), but I am not sure that it is a measurement of “good academics.”
For example, looking at numbers, MIT has a “learning opportunities” rating of 69 on this survey, which seems about average for most institutions in the survey listed. Some other institutions with a learning opportunities rating of 69 include Lycoming College, Penn State, Christopher Newport University, and Virginia Tech.
If I were to interpret this, I might say that students at each of these institutions appear to be equally satisfied by their own school’s learning opportunities. I am not sure that we can infer that academic quality is the same at all of these institutions, or that MIT (for example) offers an education that is about average in academic quality, compared to all other academic institutions that WSJ surveyed.
For schools with the highest ratings on this measure (looking at you, Babson), my interpretation would be that students are extremely satisfied with the learning opportunities at their school. That is great in itself and certainly something to celebrate. Babson students appear to be getting everything that they came to Babson for… while MIT students are perhaps less satisfied with what they are getting.