We're No. 1! We're No. 1! And also No. 13, 15, 18, 29, 56 and "fourth tier." When U.S. News & World Report released its rankings of the nation's graduate schools and programs, it coincidentally ignited a war of words across the college campuses included in the study.

If the prominent magazine chose to give a school a No. 1 ranking, it's a feather in the school's cap. But if a college finds itself on the bottom of the magazine's rankings, the rankings became subjective and frivolous.

That, of course, is not the immediate situation facing MSU's graduate programs, but the potential for it to exist certainly is alive. For the 10th consecutive year, our primary- and secondary-education programs were tops in the nation.

The College of Education was 13th overall, the Eli Broad College of Business was 29th and MSU-DCL College of Law failed to crack the leaderboard. Is it exemplary that our education programs consistently are the best in the nation, or is it troubling that our law school needs more work?

But such is the nature of rankings. They run the gamut of influence, attracting new students, faculty and staff to create and maintain a top notoriety, but a ranking also can be completely disregarded and affiliated as the opinion of a small group. A fine example of the subjective idea of "ranking" is this year's NCAA Tournament. Kentucky was declared the top team in the field, yet lost to upstart University of Alabama-Birmingham, a team not expected to make any noise. One man's treasure, another man's trash.

"We are very proud of the highly ranked programs," university spokesman Terry Denbow said. "It's more than commendable - it's outstanding." So is that an implication that MSU-DCL is a black mark on the university for being "fourth tier?"

Denbow continues to note that rankings aren't the end-all be-all of excellence, though: "We see these as indicators." Indicators of failure, or indicators of where to stop the bleeding? A low rank is a sign that there's work to be done, yet when a graduate program is at the top of the heap, "it's outstanding."

So the war of words that is ignited by these kinds of studies wages back and forth until the low-ranked programs spew sour grapes of how rankings are pointless, while the top-ranked programs feign surprise at the announcement with all the graciousness of a dying horse. If you know you're the best, act like it. If you know you're straggling behind in the second, third or fourth tier of law schools, do something positive to change it.

MSU-DCL is by no means a bad program because it isn't ranked highly, but to call high-ranked programs "outstanding" when they're No. 1 and low-rankings "indicators" of needed work is a waste of time.

If a highly educated, well-rounded person decided to come to MSU for postgraduate work in secondary education but hated large universities, are we really No. 1 to that person? Concurrently, if it's always been someone's dream to complete law school at MSU, is he or she a failure for going to a "fourth tier" school?

There is no concise way to navigate rankings of any kind. We're certainly proud of the schools that did well for the impact they'll have on the university at large. But then again, that doesn't mean we'd like to pretend other programs don't exist.