<p>Brian1:</p>
<p>It’s what happens when 22.5% of your ranking is based on retention and graduation rates. Tell me again why schools with higher graduation rates provide better educations and career prospects? (Hint: It doesn’t. It’s there because HYP have the highest graduation rates in the country, and US News had to find objective criteria to force HYP into the top 3 spots.) Easy schools benefit, and difficult schools get the boot. </p>
<p>Then again, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Caltech does indeed have a stagnant professor pay package, meaning that their top professors are likely being poached by higher-paying institutions like Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, and Stanford. This is something that Caltech needs to fix soon (but for the purposes of education, not for rankings).</p>