The statement in the article is that "colleges in the top tier, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn't complain." Meanwhile, colleges with lower rankings complained about them so much that the President issued an executive order prohibiting further publication of the ratings. I'm not worried about this today. There should be data-gathering along various dimensions showing what the trade-offs are of attending one or another college. A good current effort in that direction is the foundation-funded nonprofit website College Results,[1] which aggregates data that colleges are already required to report to the federal government (which is one of the biggest funders of all aspects of higher education in the United States) and presents the data in a user-friendly format. I frequently recommend the College Results website to parents whose children are trying to decide what college to attend. Figure out what trade-off dimensions are meaningful to you, and get the best information you can about how colleges differ along each dimension. College is supposedly very consequential for your future. It is certainly very expensive for some people. Find out more before committing to one or another college.

[1] http://www.collegeresults.org/