Another Important Criteria, Is Having a System President Able to Score High on the Unintentional Comedy Scale . . .

UC President Mark Yudof in an open letter, commenting on the dubious nature of college rankings with a passing reference how these rankings are 'gamed' by various institutions:

It is, of course, easy to be cynical about college rankings — too often they have been prone to manipulation or swayed by factors that do not reflect directly on the quality of education.

The very next sentence

These rankings are different. They reflect UC’s values. The magazine’s editors note as much in declaring their criteria for what makes a top-quality university.

Did he say you should be skeptical regarding these kind of rankings? Not when his schools place 1,2,3 and 6 of 8 eligible campuses (10 campuses in the UC system total, but Merced is too new to make these sort of lists, and San Francisco is a post-grad medicine only institution, so doesn't fit in rankings, as far as Santa Cruz and Irvine, they better shape up) make the top 25.

In that case, Washington Monthly has devised the most important ranking system ever invented in the history of mankind.