U.S. News Took A Hit On Rankings. Its Competitors Say They’re Doing Just Fine.

Chronicle of Higher Education, ‘U.S. News’ Took a Hit on Rankings. Its Competitors Say They’re Doing Just Fine.:

Since last fall, as dozens of colleges boycotted U.S. News & World Report’s lists of best law, medical, and undergraduate programs, other publications and companies that craft college rankings have been watching.

But they’re not worried by what they see. They say their rankings are different. ...

Money magazine is the only college ranker that told The Chronicle it had made changes this year as a result of public criticism of U.S. News. Money published star ratings for colleges for 2024, rather than rankings, a move that some rankings critics have long suggested would be more accurate and helpful to prospective students.

Leaders at Forbes, Niche, the Princeton Review, QS, and Times Higher Education all said they had no plans to change their ways because of the U.S. News rankings revolt of 2022-23. ...

U.S. News responded to the revolt by saying it would rank the protesting colleges and schools anyway. If faced with a similar situation, the competitors interviewed for this article said they could do the same, although most rely, more or less, on surveys and data they receive directly from colleges. ...

[D]istaste for one ranker doesn’t translate into a boycott of them all. Columbia University and the Rhode Island School of Design, both of which have announced they will no longer cooperate with U.S. News’s undergraduate rankings, have premium profiles on Niche. RISD and Bard and Colorado Colleges, all U.S. News undergraduate boycotters, return data surveys from the Princeton Review.