[btheshoe]

I go to washu - which does decently well on the rankings. There's a tradition every fall for the incoming freshman class to read a selected book, and my year they chose Cathy oNiel's weapons of math destruction, which goes over instances of data being used for bad outcomes, including a chapter devoted to how gaming the university ranking system had become common practice. I found it a very interesting choice on the part of the uni.

[krisoft]

It is important to remember that universities, like most organisations, are not monolithic entities. It is almost certain that the person who selects the book for the common reading program is not the same person who is responsible to optimise the university’s ranking.