Taxpayers may have more reason to be concerned about the government’s response to high levels of student debt than the debt itself.

Faux exclusivity might be good for a school’s endowment or parents’ bragging rights, but it too often encourages families to overpay for education. Applicants may be better served by interactive college guides that let students search according to lifestyle and learning preferences. Nobody wants to walk into Walmart and pay top-shelf prices for store-brand merchandise.

In the most recent Education Outlook, AEI scholar Rick Hess and Taryn Hochleitner explain how the inflation of college rankings contributes to a false sense of exclusivity and rising tuitions.

The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

Armed with better data, the theory goes, students and parents will vote with their wallets, putting pressure on low-performing colleges to improve while avoiding direct government intervention.  But these provisions are not working nearly as well as intended.