Steve Cohen took a look at college rankings:

• The most commonly accepted measures of college rankings have serious deficiencies. The proportion of professors with a Ph.D. is usually an important metric but the educational level of the Professor has nothing to do with their educational ability.
• In fact the most prestigious professors might be the poorest educators because they have the least amount of time to focus on their students.
• Another measure that is used is the average size of classes. But some of the most dazzling professors do their best work in front of large audiences.
• Instead college rankings should look at the ‘happiness quotient’ of a campus.
• Salaries of graduates up to ten years after graduation should also be evaluated.
• For those going to college to find a job, measures of what employers think of the University should also be published.

Read more about the more questionable metrics that existing rankings use, what they should actually look at, and the increasing importance of the debt that university can put people into over here.

Source: The Daily Beast