College Rankings Were Once a Shocking Experiment

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In 1934, Edwin Embree made an informal list of “the dozen greatest universities in America.” As he related in The Atlantic the following year, “A storm at once broke over my temerarious head.” An unnamed politician responded with curses and threats over the exclusion of his state’s university on the list. The unranked institutions demanded to be ranked and threatened libel suits. The highly ranked wished to be ranked higher. An eager swarm of “pupils and their mothers” clamored to know what college to attend. Only the Harvard people, whose institution Embree ranked first, were happy.

Embree, a foundation executive who had worked in higher education, wrote his