Rankings increasingly dominate our world. We use them to choose just about everything—from which pizza or ice cream to buy, to which doctors to trust with our health, to which universities to trust with our intellectual growth and flourishing. But should we trust them? Taking popular academic rankings as an example, such as the U.S. News rankings, this article contends not necessarily, for several reasons. First, because as this article argues, the U.S. News rankings may mislead rather than inform consumers. Second, by fueling a prestige battle between universities, the U.S. News rankings incentivize universities to harm cultural and economic diversity—important facets of educational quality. These conclusions, critical in their own right, raise additional important but underexplored questions for antitrust law. Should universities be allowed to boycott the U.S. News rankings so that they can free themselves of the prestige battle in which they participate? Can an “antirankings boycott” be justified by antitrust law on the basis that it may allow universities to promote diversity and increase access to the underserved? Although these questions are not easy to address, they are at the heart of this article.

中文翻译：

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机会平等与反垄断：大学排名的奇特案例

排名越来越主宰我们的世界。我们用它们来选择几乎所有东西——从买比萨饼或冰淇淋，到信任我们健康的医生，到信任我们智力成长和繁荣的大学。但是我们应该相信他们吗？以流行的学术排名为例，例如美国新闻排名，本文认为不一定，有几个原因。首先，因为正如本文所说，美国新闻排名可能会误导而不是告知消费者。其次，通过助长大学之间的声望之争，US News 排名激励大学损害文化和经济多样性——教育质量的重要方面。这些结论本身就很重要，为反垄断法提出了其他重要但未充分探索的问题。是否应该允许大学抵制美国新闻的排名，这样他们就可以摆脱他们所参与的声望之战？“反排名抵制”是否可以通过反托拉斯法来证明它可能允许大学促进多样性并增加服务不足的机会？尽管这些问题并不容易解决，但它们是本文的核心。