When Consumer Reports rates and compares cars, it measures them on the basis of categories such as performance, safety, reliability and value. It tries to measure "outputs"—in short, what the car does. U.S. News mostly looks at "inputs" (money spent, class size, test scores of students, degrees held by faculty), rather than assessing what the college or university actually accomplishes for students over the lives of their enrolment. If Consumer Reports functioned like U.S. News, it would rank cars on the amount of steel and plastic used in their construction, the opinions of competing car dealers, the driving skills of customers, the percentage of managers and sales people with MBAs and the sticker price on the vehicle (the higher, the better).

All administrators agree that "exit" data are much better than "entry" data. But schools have this information! The magazine would use it if it could. Why can't they get it? The schools in the study will often not let the information become public. Why? They say that such student information cannot be made public because it's confidential.

Balderdash! If the students were told the information was going to be made public, they wouldn't bat an eye. In fact, they would want the information made public. They could have used it themselves when they were planning to go to college. Clearly, the elite schools don't release this information because it would have a profound effect on the top twenty schools rankings. The better the students, the harsher the comments. I've taught the same course to random undergraduates and to honor students. The honor students invariably complain more. They have higher standards not only for themselves but for me.

—James B. Twitchell, Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld