The rankings are current, reflecting the relative qualities of American colleges and universities in the year 2001. While based on the National Research Council's faculty quality study reported in 1995, the rankings are effective today because growth and decline in the scholastic achievements of universities occur gradually. Commercial organizations often manipulate their measured variables to give an impression of dramatic annual changes, but such manipulations violate the standards for scholarly reporting and are generally unethical.
Institutional standings result from many years of achievements in research and science.
They do not change according to the number of seats the ranking organization occupies on the governing bodies of the ranked universities, nor according to opinions based upon standards and methods that are meaninglessly illogical.