The College Rankings Racket - NYTimes.com

The College Rankings Racket - NYTimes.com: So universities that once served populations that were different from the Harvard or Yale student body now go after the same elite high school students with the highest SAT scores. And schools know that, if they want to get a better ranking, they need to spend money like mad — even though they will have to increase tuition that is already backbreaking. “If you figure out how to do the same service for less money, your U.S. News ranking will go down,” says Kevin Carey, the director of education policy at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. The rankings encourage trends that ill-serve the country.

It's all true! And we at Williams know it: I actually regret the folks who come here for "the best" small college education but don't want to see the sunshine, the mountains, the isolation....