Look how desperate people are to get listed somewhere for something. The Commissioner of Parks has a staffer count the number of hands who pet his dog, and Sri Chinmoy's disciples undertake all manner of weird exploits, both in order to get in the Guinness Book of Records. And universities tout their U. S. News and World Report rankings as they troll for alumni gifts and prospective customers. There's good news and bad news about lists. Documentary filmmakers get a measure of fundraising help.
Universities get to pick and choose among the applicants they want to pick and choose among.
Parents and prospective students may hear of colleges they'd never heard of before. They emphasize precisely what can be counted, and sweep aside what cannot be. They boost a secular society's version of canonization. In the mania for ranking, shoppers tend to assume that rankers have reason to know what they're talking about. Numbers look hard and fast.