U.S. News's College Rankings Face Competition and Criticism

He dismissed the Princeton Review's approach, which is based on interviews with 120,000 students: "Princeton Review just calls up bartenders and says, 'How many people are in your bar?' "

Franek had little nice to say about Kelly's product: "I place no credibility on hierarchical rankings. There is no way you can say 'This school is 1,and this school is 401.' It doesn't resonate anymore. It's useless."

Edward B. Fiske of the "Fiske Guide to Colleges" said he believes his approach has more credibility because it avoids gimmicks and quickly reacts to trends.

Fiske includes student interviews, though not as many as Franek's book, and other information he collects as he travels the country. He said he decides which colleges to include based on a variety of information -- some subjective -- that changes year to year.

The Princeton Review includes 62 lists, not about academics but other elements of school life, including which schools are most accepting of gays. He said a survey of 6,000 people showed that only 9 percent said they would choose a school because it was considered to have the best academics, while 53 percent said they were looking for "the best fit."

The U.S. News rankings are different in approach and result.

Annually, the magazine ranks more than 1,900 schools based on massive amounts of data collected from the schools and other sources, placing them in different categories and tiers by mission and in some cases region. (Many schools complain that it takes several days to assemble the information to meet the magazine's format, even though much of the information is available from the Department of Education.)

The editors say they use quantitative measures said to be reliable indicators of academic quality, and rely on their own view of what is important to report, such as student retention, faculty resources and alumni giving.

Kelly said the editors tweak their formula every year, offering improvements and responding to critics. The 2008 rankings, for example, have reclassified more than 200 schools in different categories and for the first time included military service academies.

Critics call the changes a ploy to warrant new sales.

They also say that U.S. News puts large public schools at a disadvantage by including the amount of endowment per student.

The belief that the higher the dollar number available per student inherently means a better education is, said George Mason University President Alan Merten, "just not true."

It is no wonder, critics say, that small elite colleges virtually always come out on top.

In the rankings released today, Princeton University topped the list of best national universities, followed by Harvard and Yale universities -- retaining their positions from 2007.

Not everyone is ready to scrap the rankings. Deborah Balogh, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Indianapolis, thinks they are useful to students and to the schools, allowing them to see how they "stack up on several specific measures." She said that she believes reluctance to participate "may be construed by the public as defensiveness about being evaluated and held accountable."

Even those who don't submit information to the guides can see some merit in them.

St. John's College President Christopher Nelson said he has chosen to ignore them altogether and provides no data. Still, he said, the guides are valuable because they provide narratives as well as data about many schools that a student might never have known.

But he said he believes only a small group of the most competitive students actually care a lot about the rankings.

"I think parents worry about it," Nelson said. "I haven't seen it with young people. When you talk to students in high school, the overwhelming thing that students say matters to them is a question of fit. 'When I go on that campus, does it look like I belong there?' "