Feeding the college admissions beast

The College Ranking Service retorts to the U.S. News worldview:

For the seventh straight year, the College Ranking Service (CRS, rankyourcollege.com), has found that prestige in colleges and universities correlates with the size of endowment. The richest schools are the most prestigious. ...

For the seventh straight year, the CRS found that state universities continue to be squeezed by state governments. They will never be as prestigious as the universities above because they don’t have their wealth. But they are the engines that provide this country with its educated workforce. Without Harvard et al., this country would still do well. Without UCLA et al., this country would be in real trouble. The CRS suggests that you take the money that you would normally give to your prestigious and already wealthy alma mater (if you perhaps went to one of those schools) and give it to your state university instead.

For the seventh straight year, the CRS found that US News' college ranking is fraudulent in at least two ways: 1) it tries to make quantitivate distinctions between universities on the basis of statistically insignificant differences; 2) it jiggles its methodology every year to make sure its rankings change in order to generate public interest.

And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer comments:

College Rankings: A better exam

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
U.S. News & World Report's lucrative rankings of colleges are out again. The scoring is taken very seriously by colleges, high school students and, presumably, the magazine's accountants.

"Second Thoughts on Admissions Reform" in Inside Higher Ed (Aug. 30) aims at those who follow, studiously or obsessively, every twist in the debate about "early admissions" or "early decision." If that's you, here's the latest.