my life on this general topic.

#1 - If you don't measure something, you can never improve it. If all your knowledge of a topic is purely qualitative, it is just about impossible to either identify meaningful improvements, or to know if they worked.

#2 - Be VERY careful what you measure and how you measure it. The moment you decide something is important enough to measure, people are going to focus on achieving a good measurement over achieving a good outcome.

Best example I can think of: We want educated children. We measure them with standardized testing and incentivize schools based on test scores. What we get are children who are good at taking standardized tests and not necessarily who are educated.

[Edit - Next best example is corporate executives being judged by stock prices, dividend yields, and quarterly profits. There are things you can do to run an organization well, and there are things you can do to maximize short term profits. Ideally, the two should be the same, but they aren't.]

Back to this case, the USNWR college rankings are considered to be the industry standard of measurement for higher education. Almost every school is going to focus on the elements that go into those rankings (whether they have anything to do with providing a good education or not). And there will always be a few who will genuinely game the system or even outright cheat just to make their school look good in the rankings.
[Post edited by Tafkam Hokie at 03/16/2022 10:25AM]