You can see a lot of hypocrisy that’s uncritically accepted by a lot of organizations, including nonprofits. Exclusionary higher education is a particular notable example, given the soaring rhetoric of “inclusion” spouted by some people involved with higher ed, versus the reality of those same schools seeking to reject as many applicants as possible. Princeton University’s president, Chris Eisgruber, has, for example, blathered extensively about the school’s efforts to “combat systemic racism.” Princeton has a $37 billion endowment. The school’s undergrad acceptance rate is 5.6% and it charges a sticker price of $73,000 a year (yes, the school does accept a handful of token low-income students every year, but that the school’s overall demographics reflect its target: the wealthy). Does that sound like a school devoted to combating systemic racism to you? How can people make these kinds of arguments with a straight face? Colleges and universities are run largely for the benefit of their administrators. The other exclusionary schools are doing the same things, as are their private-school feeders, despite their vigorous marketing to the contrary.
Regarding the above paragraph, let me be clear: describing how something is, is not the same thing as approving of it.
Also, even the value rankings are mostly just Ivies at the top. Funny enough, my school is in the ~30s for overall rankings, but in the low 100s for value, since they're looking at the out-of-state cost (which for UCs is around 50k vs. 15k in-state), and they include grants, which is extremely variable by individual student. If they looked at the in-state tuition, UCs would dominate the value rankings.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive...
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/rank...
wtf
Also, US News and World Report rankings have major problems, for instance, the ranking algorithm considers campus aesthetics and food quality, but doesn't account for price, giving schools incentive to raise prices to fund campus improvements that boost rank, in turn boosting applications, in turn reducing % acceptance (the principal indicator of "quality" in US schools). This was how TCU went from a meh christian school to a "selective private college" in just a couple of years. World Report now publishes a "best dollar value" report to account for this, but few read it.