Let the debate begin

It may be football season, but academics need something to argue about, too. Cue the 38th annual US News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, which were unveiled on Sunday.

📝 The top five… Based on a combination of tuition cost, university resources, student debt load, graduation outcomes, professional reputation/prestige, etc. (see the full methodology here), here’s what we’ve got.

        1. Princeton

        2. MIT

        T3. Harvard

        T3. Stanford

        T3. Yale

😬🧂 But this year’s list comes with a grain of salt: Columbia University dropped 16 rankings year-over-year, from #2 → #18. And the reason why invites some questions.

This past February, Columbia Mathematics Professor Michael Thaddeus was curious about the Ivy League school’s rise in rankings from 18th place, on its debut in 1988, to 2nd place in 2021. While other top-tier universities have also improved their standings, none did so quite as much as his employer – or quite as fast.

When Thaddeus compared data submitted to USN&WR to data the university had made public elsewhere, he found some discrepancies – “sometimes quite large.” And they always seemed to work out in Columbia’s favor.

• In a statement released on Friday, the university admitted to submitting inaccurate data for consideration in last year’s rankings.