Here's an insider's insight: Colleges hate these rankings too, including the shit eating grin they have to plaster on their face when they go out in public and say things like "We're one of the top 10 small public non-land grant research institutions in the upper middle pacific northwest region!"

But too many families have been convinced that rankings like this are useful so now the institutions have little choice but to become complicit in the ridiculous system or have their enrollment decimated and be unable to pay its bills.