Here’s a story from Washington Monthly on the big hole at the center of most college rankings: the actual knowledge and skills students acquire during their years on campus. Here’s how the author puts it:

But what’s missing from all the rankings is the equivalent of a bottom line. There are no widely available measures of how much learning occurs inside the classroom, or of how much students benefit from their education. This makes the process of selecting a college a bit like throwing darts at a stock table. It also means that colleges and universities, like our imaginary mutual-fund managers, feel little pressure to ensure that students learn. As anyone who’s ever snoozed through a giant freshman psychology 101 lecture knows, sitting in a classroom doesn’t equal learning; knowledge doesn’t come by osmosis.

The article errs in downplaying the testing of knowledge, turning instead to that self-congratulatory and half-illusory concept “critical thinking” (what’s the matter with asking all graduating seniors to demonstrate a basic knowledge of history, civics, and other central disciplines?). But it still raises pertinent issues of accountability, and notes how much resistance one can expect administrators and professors to mount against this bottom-line assessment.