In light of the current student loan/debt crisis, this factor is often overlooked:
The rankings, don’t reward schools that graduate students who find solid employment. In fact, U.S. News doesn’t even ask about employment success.
What do you want to bet that graduates of the top (say top 15-20) schools have landed decent jobs?
It’s the middle of the road and (worse) diploma mill grads who have to worry about employment prospects and/or those who choose truly worthless majors (which reflects in itself a certain intelligence deficit).
What the article writer fails to mention is that the “top” private schools (or most of them) do, in fact, cover with grants (not loans) all financial need of admitted students.