What was SIU's rank? I don't see it listed in the article. 

Don't believe this trsah.  nbc5 is awful.

Beaten out by E in who's fever dream? Silly stuff. Unfortunately, this kind of crap hurts my favorite school - The SIU - and I've been around. I've had a lot of experience with E grads in my area of expertise (basketball coaching ha ha) and they haven't even been close to the "THE SIU" grads I've worked with. Of course that doesn't mean you can't get a good education at E. I'm sure you can. It's a state university and has all the certifications.

Ranking colleges (and everything else) has become big business for Newsweek and other organizations always looking for more money/readership, etc. Elite schools have used it for marketing.

Now some are rebelling and refusing to participate, with good reason. Everyone has different criterion for what makes a school good. Research? Good teachers? Hard to get into? Beautiful campus? Famous professors? a specific program? great library? great parties? location? sports teams? blah, blah, blah. 

U of I is selective and is a large research institute, like most Big 10 schools (Wisconsin, Ohio State, Penn St., etc.)  I am very familiar with three highly rated Big 10 schools. Yes they have the reputation, but if you believe you get a better education there, you're nuts. You're likely to have an overworked grad assistant for a lot of your courses the first couple of years (and some of them might be better teachers than Professor Giveashit who is more concerned about getting tenure or a big NSF grant.) 

Editorial: College rankings are misleading. So why do we still use them?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-04-04/editorial-college-rankings-us-news-challenges

"Probably few college applicants are aware that the single biggest factor U.S. News uses to rank schools is their reputation among officials at other colleges, who might or might not have deep knowledge of the schools. That accounts for 20% of the score.

The second biggest factor is six-year graduation rates. But since low-income students are far less likely to graduate within that time period — or ever — than middle-class students, this is more an indication of student affluence than academic excellence. In fact, it can have the perverse effect of discouraging colleges from accepting more low-income students, lest it worsen their graduation rates."

It was probably the SJW stuff that hurt our ranking.