The subjectiveness is a big part of what makes them so interesting. I would never claim that any ranking reflects reality perfectly. For one thing, they rank universities as a whole, despite the fact that there are sometimes huge gaps in prestige from program to program within a school.

In the end, you just have to examine the methodology for yourself... once you've done that, the rankings become far more useful, because you can decide which criteria matter most to you.

But as a quick illustration of the fact that money ? great education, I do think they're pretty useful.