<p>Here are the @usnews rankings of national universities from 1988. 8 public u's in top 25. Today: 3</p>
<p>Look how cheap Rice used to be. It was priced like a public back then. I think I remember reading that at one point, Rice was free (I may not be remembering that right).</p>
<p>Interesting. Rice was cheaper than Michigan. Michigan wasn’t too much cheaper than Duke.</p>
<p>Harvard’s tuition was ~$12K in 1988. According to one online inflation calculator, $12K in 1988 would be equivalent to $23,641.83 in 2013. For 2013-14, Harvard’s tuition is almost $38,900.</p>
<p>[Inflation</a> Rate Calculator- from InflationData.com](<a href=“http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp]Inflation”>http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp)</p>
<p>[Rice</a> University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Rice University - Wikipedia”>Rice University - Wikipedia) says this:</p>
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<p>The court case in question is shown here:</p>
<p>[COFFEE</a> v. WILLIAM MARSH RICE UNIVERSITY | Leagle.com](<a href=“No Decision | Leagle.com”>COFFEE v. WILLIAM MARSH R | 387 S.W.2d 132 (1965) | sw2d1321492 | Leagle.com)</p>
<p>Stanford also used to be free.</p>
<p>The “high tuition-high financial aid” business model for ambitious, elite-minded, colleges is the dumbest consequence to emerge from 25 years of USNews domination of the college guide book and ranking racket.</p>
<p>^^ What’s truly shocking, if you think about it, is that the USNWR rankings were just a little scam to sell their weak magazine… the editors coming up with the formulae were really just b<strong><em>sh</em></strong>ing it as they went a long, tweaking from year to year to purposely rearrange schools and sell even more magazines.</p>
<p>And yet, it’s not just naive students who have been suckered in, but freaking college/university presidents and deans fully buy into the absurdity of a bunch of USNWR editors who have no expertise in statistics, education metrics, etc. From what I have heard anecdotally, law schools have completely, totally given in to the whims of USNWR.</p>
<p>USNWR rankings became popular because they tended to confirm the informal prestige rankings that people commonly had (though “filling in the blanks” for schools that the reader may not have been aware of). Indeed, that may be what they were designed to do.</p>
<p>The costs shown in the link from the OP show why NMF scholarships were really a good deal at one time. Now the big $ come for those scholarships from the schools.</p>
<p>I don’t think they were “designed” to do anything except sell magazines. Unfortunately, as they kept tweaking the formulae (based on absolutely nothing that could be objectively or scientifically based), they knocked most of the elite flagship public universities out of the top 20.</p>
<p>USNWR “won” the “market” for college rankings because they “made sense” in aligning with most people’s previous notion of “better” versus “worse” colleges.</p>
<p>To some extent… except for the fact that many flagship publics “made sense” to be higher ranked among “better”, and then because USNWR pulled their formulae out of their buts, they pushed the public schools right out of the top 20. So in that sense, no they were not just confirming public opinion, but actively shaping, or warping that public opinion.</p>
<p>Andrew Ferguson devotes nearly an entire chapter in “Crazy U” to an interview with the guy who came up with the USNWR Rankings. Despite the complaints, and misuse of the rankings, they actually make more sense than you might think.</p>