What goes into “best school” in . . . ?

It doesn’t say anywhere in the Wall Street Journal listing of Best Schools by major that the graduates have jobs, but in business and economics Ohio State and Rutgers outrank Harvard.  So looking through the comments about these rankings, I see:

Rod Schultz asks:  “Would anyone in the right state of mind really pick Ohio State or Rutgers over Harvard to study business and economics?”

Rick Joseph responds:  “Certainly! Subsequent to a comprehensive evaluation of the tuition costs at each institution, the debt incurred after graduation, the relative ranking of the universities under consideration, etc. Ohio State and Rutgers, as well as Florida, Texas, Virginia would be preferable over Harvard.

Not surprisingly there have been several recent studies (like "Estimating the Return to College Selectivity Over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data," Stacy Dale and Alan B. Krueger, NBER Working Paper (June 2011), and those that show employers prefer State University Grads over Ivy League, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358904575477643369663352.html?mod=WSJ_PathToProfessions_TopLEADNewsCollection) that have doused cold water on the traditional Ivy League fetish when considering an undergraduate degree. Since the 1950s these institutions are not what they once were, they are considerably overpriced, and most flagship public universities have become exceptional institutions on par or better. Ask most high school students in states like Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Florida where they would prefer to attend and very few would pick the Ivy League institutions over their flagship state universities.

 
Today, the fetish for the "Ivies" is limited mainly to the Northeast.”

Well said.