We are slaves to a defunct magazine

The US News and World Report is going belly-up:

This is kind of sad: word late last week of the end of U.S. News & World Report as a print publication, after a 77-year run. (Technically, it will no longer be something you can subscribe to, though some standalone issues will still be published and go on sale.) The in-house memo announcing the change, which has a resolutely upbeat “taking this opportunity to spend more time with the family” tone, is on the Romenesko site here.

They’re dying, yet Brandeis still panics at every the merest twitch in our position in their bullshit rankings.

I don’t know our ranking in the USN&WR and I don’t care. If I had to choose a ranking to worry about, I’d use these. The Washington Monthly tries to evaluate how much a University contributes to society. No rankings are perfect, but at least they try to measure something useful.

Or maybe we should worry about our environmental leadership score.

Anything would make more sense than a system where your ranking improves when you increase tuition.

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