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[quote=Anonymous]Barrons, Fiske, and perhaps some others were used as references.  They did not rate per se, but they did have stars and/or buckets "most selective".  I believe this was in many ways superior to what USNWR does, where the ranking turns slight differences into an ordinal ranking.  Not only that, many of the USNWR ranking factors are not of quality of education, but inputs (e.g. how much is spent), and can be manipulated by how a school reports.

Perhaps in part because of the focus on resources in USNWR, the schools have entered into a spending arms race since the early 80s that has seen tuition and fees go up about 3X the rate of inflation for about 40 years.  Other than healthcare, higher education is the most out-of-control segment of the U.S. economy, and has resulted in huge increases in student loan debt.

The other things that are different are common application and how easy it is to apply to more schools now.  Without the common app, kids applied to far fewer schools.  The test prep industry has also matured.  Stats all look higher today, but there has been a HUGE wave of high school grade inflation over a long period of time.  I have seen studies that indicate that average time spent studying have not increased (and have actually gone down since the 1960s), although it could be that the top students may be studying more.[/quote]

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