U.S. News and World Report is famous for its college rankings but their methods are becoming obsolete.

The Washington Post reported.

The end of college rankings as we know them

It’s been nearly 25 years since U.S. News & World Report introduced the annual version of its college rankings. That’s also when the rankings shifted from what had largely been a beauty contest based solely on a survey of college presidents to one that aimed to replicate the quantitative nature of Consumer Reports.

If Consumer Reports could tell you with some specificity the best washer to buy or the most reliable car on the market, the thinking was that U.S. News could do the same with one of the most expensive purchases in life: a college degree.

But unlike Consumer Reports, which ranked products on how well they performed in daily use, U.S. News decided to rank colleges on the types of students they accepted (SAT scores and class rank), how much they spent on faculty (salaries and class size), and how many students stayed in school and graduated. It was as if Consumer Reports judged products based on the quality of their raw ingredients rather than the final product.

The rankings turned into a big business for U.S. News, even outlasting the print magazine that gave birth to them. They also spawned dozens of copycat rankings from other publications and organizations during the past two decades.

While the U.S. News rankings still loom large among colleges that try anything to improve their position — just see the recent controversy at Mount St. Mary’s University — there are signs that the list is beginning to show its age in an era of changing consumer behavior about picking colleges.