Rewriting

on.
When the U.S. News editors first devised a formula that declared, with statistical accuracy,
which school was on top, they quantified something previously thought to be intangible. For
generations, colleges and universities had generally relied on a mysterious brew of prestige and
reputation. Suddenly, legacies and tradition—qualities that had taken decades, and sometimes
centuries, for schools to cultivate—were less important than cold, hard data. Schools that once relied
on children of alumni and word of mouth were exposed by their own stats, including graduation and
retention rates, admissions data (acceptance rate, average SAT score), academics (class size, number
of full-time faculty), and reputation (peer reviews). Needless to say, U.S. News’s college rankings
landed on the world of higher education with a thud.
With their authoritative tone, the rankings also introduced new possibilities. Before they
appeared, it was doubtful that NU could ever rub shoulders with Boston College or Harvard. But
now, with a codified system out there, nearly everything was reduced to numbers. And those
numbers could be beat. “They give you a playing field on which you can play,” Freeland says of the
rankings. They give schools “a way to compete.”
From the start, schools have argued that the rankings are subjective. Defenders of the
rankings maintain that the system exposes students to more schools and helps the consumer
compare products. Regardless, students, graduate schools, and employers have embraced the list,
giving it unprecedented power. An unintended result, however, is that schools need to spend more to
stay competitive in the categories that U.S. News considers important. Universities may be in the
business of education, but it’s a competitive business in which all compete for students and revenue.
With an arms race to the top, higher education has soared out of reach for an increasing number of
Americans. NU tuition alone in 1989 was $9,500; today it’s $42,534.
“You can love us or hate us, but we’re not going away,” says U.S. News editor Brian Kelly.
“University officials realized we’re much more valuable to them than not.” He deflects criticism,
saying, “It’s not up to us to solve problems. We’re just putting data out there.” He does, however,
admit that the rankings system can be gamed.
For those at Northeastern, breaking into the U.S. News top 100 was like landing a man on
the moon, but Freeland was determined to try. Reverse-engineering the formulas took months;
perfecting them took years. “We could say, ‘Well