<p>USNews is more reliable than simple public opinion, because the truth is, public opinion is really quite limited. USNews and other rankings give programs that don't have pop-culture name recognition but have otherwise strong academic programs the chance to demonstrate their worth. For example, certain schools like the University of Chicago, Carnegie-Mellon, Rice, and Caltech are all fantastic schools that are unknown by much of the general population. Rankings like USNews demonstrate that these schools deserve to be counted amongst the best schools in the nation. Let's be honest. We both know that if rankings didn't exist, a lot of people would continue to dismiss schools like that because they wouldn't think they were good. A lot of people would continue to believe that the University of Chicago was a no-name city school. Heck, some of my high school teachers had never heard of UChicago. Because USNews exists, you can at least point to the rankings as evidence that UChicago is a good school. Otherwise you would have a far greater time convincing people.</p>
<p>The rankings also serve another useful purpose in that it often drives university administrators to make their school better. Yes, there is some gaming that happens (i.e. so-called "Tufts Syndrome") but for the most part, the rankings are a positive force to getting administrators to improve the schools. By emphasizing things like selectivity, you are incentivizing schools to be increasing selectivity either by marketing themselves in order to get stronger applicants, or offering scholarships to entice the top students to come, or whatever. By examining financial resources, you are encouraging schools to increase spending-per-capita (which generally means getting more funds from alumni donations, research grants, and so forth). </p>
<p>I agree that sometimes these pressures are not always positive, but the sad truth is that without these pressures, many school administrators would simply do nothing at all. At least they get pressured into doing something. That's better than nothing. For example, I remember when Berkeley fell out of the top 25 during the 90's budget crisis, the Berkeley administrators diligently worked to improve the school in order to get the school back into the ranking. I believe that if USNews didn't exist, then none of those improvements would have been made. Unfortunately, for some schools, it takes a kick in the pants like a bad ranking in order to spur them to make things better. It's like using the threat of bad grades to force students to study. If there were no exams and no grades, the truth is, a lot of students would be lazy and never study. </p>
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Yale/Harvard/Princeton/MIT have always had outstanding reputations, even in the 1910's
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<p>The first 3, yes. But not so much MIT. You have to remember, MIT almost went bankrupt at about that time and nearly got acquired by Harvard. MIT's truly became prominent during WW2 and the post-war period. That is when MIT truly became the science and engineering powerhouse that it is now, because of the huge spur of defense spending. You have to understand that MIT is and always has been deeply linked to the Pengaton and to military research, especially with regards to the development of technologies with strong military applications such as radar, missiles, jet airplanes, computers, nuclear energy, and so forth. MIT is deeply intertwined with Lincoln Laboratories and Draper Labs, which are both major military research centers. </p>
<p>This gets into another subject, namely the history of science and technology. In a nutshell, the US has only been a major military power only since WW2, as well as being a major science and technology power since that time. Before WW2, the US military was quite militarily weak (because it didn't need a big military - Canada and Mexico also had small militaries), and, except during wartime, spent very little on the military, compared to the behemoth armies of Europe. For example, during the 1920's, the US had something like the 11th largest army in the world. I believe that even the Netherlands had a bigger and better army at the time. The US had great military POTENTIAL, but chose not to translate that into a powerful military. The UK was, far and away, the strongest military power in the world, chiefly because of its dominant Navy. </p>
<p>Couple that with the fact that before WW2, almost all of the science Nobels were won by Europeans. The Americans won relatively few. For example, while Harvard might be able to boast of having 2 or 3 Nobel laureates on the faculty, numerous universities in Germany would have 5 or more each, and places like Cambridge University would easily have 10 or more. Just look at the Chemistry and Physics Nobels before WW2 and you will see that about half of them were won by Germans. Not to mention all those won by the UK, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, etc. The US won very few science Nobels before WW2. </p>
<p>In fact, I seem to recall reading that, before WW2, Dutch universities won more science Nobels than all of the US universities put together. And that's just talking about the Dutch. </p>
<p>When did MIT win its first Nobel? In 1944. What was it for? For work in the MIT Radiation Lab...basically for radar. </p>
<p>The point is, by 1910, MIT had clearly not established among the pantheon of the elite. Not even close. The fact is, at that time, the US was not a major science and technology power. At that time, that power lay in Europe. It was in Europe that the major advances were being made. For example, it was in Europe where both quantum physics and the theory of relativity were discovered. It was in Europe where the chemical periodic table was proposed. It was in Europe where radioactivity was first discovered, where the principles of electromagnetism and optics were found, and where the atom was first split (Otto Hahn of Germany). Before the war, American universities were only minor players on the world stage of science.</p>
<p>So the point is, rankings can serve to capture the rise of a certain school. MIT is a very young school, and by 1910, was almost certainly still not considered among the elite. MIT was founded only in 1861. It was a very good American science school by 1910, but that doesn't mean much because the US was not a major science power. The best science minds in America didn't really want to study at MIT - they usually wanted to study in Europe. After all, that's where most of the science was happening. Right now you see lots of foreign nationals choosing to study at American universities. Well, before WW2, lots of Americans chose to study at European universities. </p>
<p>I think maybe the best example of all is Stanford. Stanford is extremely young - founded in 1891. And for the first 50 years of its existence, Stanford was basically a no-name school with very little money and very little prestige. Stanford's rise is intimately connected with the rise of Silicon Valley, yet Silicon Valley didn't even exist until the late 30's and didn't accelerate until the 50's and 60's. Nowadays people obviously recognize Stanford as elite, and it is probably the one school in the world that has the best chance of dethroning Harvard. But 100 years ago, Stanford was clearly not a top school.</p>
<p>So the point of all that is that schools do not "always" have outstanding reputations. Things change all the time. </p>
<p>To give you a last example, before the 40's, MIT had minimal reputation for economics. Now, it is one of the top economics schools in the world, and arguably THE top school. MIT did this through the hard work of building up its economics program - hiring top profs, investing resources, getting top students, and so forth. I now see that MIT is doing the same thing with its political science department. MIT used to have minimal strength in Poli-Sci, but the rankings now indicate that MIT has either a #10 (USNews) or #12 (NRC) ranked poli-sci department. I can also see that as Yale continues to pour money into its business school (the Yale School of Management), it will continue to get better and better. The Yale SOM is far and away the youngest of the top B-schools, having been founded only in 1975. Heck, the Yale SOM has plenty of MBA students who are older than the school itself.</p>