Colleges are already ranked by numerous private and public organizations which have been doing so for years. Why does the government need to get involved?

Real Clear Politics Washington Editor Carl M. Cannon examined this issue in a recent article. Here’s a key excerpt.

Grading Obama’s College-Ranking Proposal

…So let’s look at what Obama is proposing. His big idea is to have the federal government rank colleges—and then link federal aid, in the form of student loan guarantees, to the results of those rankings. Let’s stipulate that the second part of that equation will be tough sledding: altering such funding formulations requires new legislation, something our perpetually gridlocked Congress would likely have trouble doing. So it might not even happen.

The first part of the president’s equation is something the executive branch can do on its own. But should it? Several organizations, many of them private media concerns, already rank colleges. The most well-known is U.S. News & World Report, which made a franchise out of this exercise many years ago. This niche earned the magazine a lot of money, along with legions of detractors. These critics range from jealous competitors to some of the most thoughtful commentators on the higher education scene.

Many higher-ed experts find the U.S. News methods too subjective, not transparent enough, elitist, and predictable. (For 2013, for instance, Harvard and Princeton tied at the top in the rankings, with Yale third, and two other private schools, the University of Chicago and Columbia, rounding out the top five.) Addressing such concerns, U.S. News has added other categories, such as “Regional Colleges,” to their mix.

This process has spawned imitators. Princeton Review has waded into the college ranking pool, along with other publishing organizations including Forbes, Kiplinger, and Washington Monthly. The annual rankings by the latter, a small, liberal, Washington-based magazine, are actually my favorite. Its criteria are somewhat idiosyncratic, but I like them.