Jackalope Pursuivant's secret to a high-value, low-cost education

Go to a dirt-cheap third-tier state university and graduate 3 months before tuition goes through the roof. (Tuition has fully doubled since I graduated 4 years ago.) Then, wait around for the school to move up in the rankings.

Arizona State University has shed its third-tier status and cracked the top 50 percent of U.S. universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Okay, so being in the 51st percentile isn't all that great, really.

U.S. News' ratings have come under fire this year, but many schools still use them in marketing efforts to attract top students and faculty.

U.S. News' ratings come under fire every year. It's a tradition, like ASU keggers.

The rankings are based on several factors, including class size, per-student spending, graduation rates and percent of alumni who donate. How a college is viewed by peer universities plays a large role. Critics say the rankings are flawed and favor rich, private schools.

Because it's inconceivable that having lots and lots of money, being highly selective, and avoiding direct government control would actually lead to a higher-quality educational institution?

ASU President Michael Crow said he is more concerned with increasing graduation rates and per-pupil spending than with rankings.

I still cannot figure out why high graduation rates are considered a positive factor. High graduation rates, especially at a school with very low admissions standards like ASU - you have to be alive to enroll, though the dead have been known to graduate - are prima facie evidence of low academic standards.

"We have felt bad, in a sense, that the university was classified in the third tier," he said. "We knew we were delivering a first-tier education from our faculty."

If you think ASU offers a first-tier education, I urge you to reexamine your sources of evidence. Somebody is lying to you.

In other ASU News, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies has been renamed the Department of Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies.