More than a dozen medical schools and more than 40 laws schools say they will no longer provide information to U.S. News & World Report for its rankings of colleges. Independent, reliable sources of information about colleges, however, can be difficult to come by. What’s worse, information higher education institutions provide about themselves to the public – their costs, postgraduate placement rates, whether credits will transfer – has historically been, and in many cases still is, not accurate. The dean of Harvard Medical School was emphatic and unambiguous when he announced in January that it would end its participation in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. “Rankings cannot meaningfully reflect the…