Interesting article in the New York Times:  Public Universities Chase Excellence, at a Price, by Tamar Lewin:

If there is any goal that the University of Florida has pursued as fervently as a national football championship for the Gators, it is a place among the nation’s highest-ranked public universities. “We need a top-10 university, so our kids can get the same education they would get at Harvard or Yale,” said J. Bernard Machen, the university president. To upgrade the university, Dr. Machen is seeking a $1,000 tuition surcharge that would be used mostly to hire more professors and lower the student-faculty ratio, not coincidentally one of the factors in the much-watched college rankings published annually by U.S. News & World Report. This year, that list ranked Florida 13th among public universities in the United States….

Manny A. Fernandez, chairman of the board at the University of Florida, talks as frankly as Dr. Machen about rankings. “I want to be on the cocktail-party list of schools that people talk about, because that influences the decisions of great students and great faculty,” Mr. Fernandez said. “I don’t apologize for trying to get the rankings up, because rankings are a catalyst for changes that improve the school.”

For more, see my MoneyLaw colleague Al Brophy’s post, Rankings Are a Catalyst for Changes that Improve the School.