I don't think they offer much. However, I'm still glad to see them. The reason I like lots of different rankings using lots of different criteria and weightin

I don't think they offer much. However, I'm still glad to see them. The reason I like lots of different rankings using lots of different criteria and weighting is that the tend to dilute the impact of any one single ranking. The reality is that people pay a lot of attention to rankings. Right now, US News and World Report does have an outsized impact on how people think of universities. And as a lot of people know, not a single public university shows up on their rankings. For instance, UC schools tend to have very well regarded faculty and graduate programs. The undergraduate programs are good too, but these schools admit large numbers of in-state students. The downside is that admissions standards are lower as a result, the upside is that far more low income students get a crack at an education at a true research university. US News rewards private research universities with very small undergraduate student bodies for the resulting "eliteness" of undergraduate admissions, which is actually ok. But does Berkeley or UCLA get any credit for enrolling more low income students than the entire ivy league each? No, not a bit, but they do get dinged for the impact on their numbers, which is how a university that is in the top 5 for almost every department still ends up outside the top 2. Then you have the Washington Monthly rankings, which perhaps over-emphasize this (along with graduate programs in engineering and science) and are stacked with top public research universities - though it doesn't get anywhere close to the US News kind of attention. Honestly, it is a little silly to see Harvard ranked so low. But it underscores how different a conclusion you can reach with very reasonable measurements. And then you have international rankings like this one, or the USNRC which tend to emphasize scholarship and research, and so forth. I guess I'd say I'd prefer to see no numerical rankings, but if we have to have them, I'd like so many that it becomes clear that numerical rankings may be measuring very different things and that no single list has an outsized impact on the way people perceive universities.