The beginning of the end of school rankings as we’ve come to know them?

School rankings and other forms of measurement are intended to provide useful information to potential students and their families. But as the schools themselves have learned, competing for a higher spot in the ranking can become like an arms race. They pull resources away from accomplishing the mission in a bid to keep or increase the score.

The U. S. News and World Report college rankings unleashed a floodgate.

In 1983, when U. S. News and World Report launched its college ranking system, it was only the first of what became a staple in the college search process, and then the graduate school search process. Everybody in the world piled on, it seemed. Forbes, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and more dove into the world of rankings, each hoping to attract the attention of students and their families. Moreover, even though we know that schools don’t change all that much year-to-year, the rankings jump around wildly as Stanford’s President pointed out some time ago.

And it worked. The rankings attracted attention, put the survey on the map and was regularly consulted by everyone in the higher education business.

Prior to their effort, schools were ranked (if at all) based on internal metrics such as reputational surveys by deans or faculty research productivity. For the MBA ranking, Businessweek changed all that by saying that actually, external constituents such as students, recruiters…