In the 1980s, when the "U.S. News & World Report" rankings of colleges were based solely on reputation, the nation's public universities were well represented at the top. However, as soon as the magazine began including its "measures of excellence," statistics intended to define quality, public universities nearly disappeared from the top. As the rankings methodology has evolved to include even more statistics, public universities have never returned to prominence. Brian Kelly, executive editor of "U.S. News," says America's public universities really have fallen that far behind their private competitors. He says public institutions are not doing as well, and he thinks it reflects the reality on campuses. But presidents and other top officials at research universities disagree with Kelly. The presidents, provosts, and academic deans surveyed about the academic quality of their peer institutions by "U.S. News" put seven public universities among the top 27 in 2007. So it appears that public universities have a hard time competing because of the other categories, based on quantitative data used by "U.S. News." A closer look reveals that almost every one of those measures--six-year graduation rates, alumni-giving rate, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rate, and financial resources--favors private institutions over public ones.