U.S. should try again on its college ratings system

The Obama administration has taken on the admirable but tricky task of rating colleges based on real-life factors that might matter the most to working families. If they're going to scrape up the money for a four-year education, these families tend to worry foremost about how much it will cost, whether their children will graduate and get a job, and whether the new graduates will be able to pay off student loans. Less important to them might be what professors elsewhere think of a college, or how many applicants it rejects, factors that weight the rankings produced by various publications, most notably U.S. News & World Report. More...