Here is a relevant tool that ranks colleges (and degrees) by ROI/EV: https://www.collegenpv.com/programrankings/?pcip=11&page=1&s.... Not perfect, but better.

As someone who just played the college admissions game last year, these (US News) rankings pretty accurately reflect the *perceptions* of the general, college applying, public (or maybe they are the source of those perceptions). They aren't really even good at that outside the T10.