csrankings provides an objective ranking of CS departments. It is the revamped version of a previous system which I followed also because it did not include NEU. The new one does. But there are reasons slightly more subtle than the fact that NEU ranks 9 in “theory” — or 11 if you remove “logic and verification”, in both cases beating institutions which are way above NEU in other rankings — why I think having this information around is very valuable. Unobjective rankings tend to be sticky and not reflect recent decay or growth. And if one still wants to ignore data at least now one knows exactly what data is being ignored.
One dimension where I would like the system to be more flexible is in the choice of venues to include in the count. For example, I think journals should be added. Among the conferences, CCC should be included, as the leading conference specialized in computational complexity. I think the user should be allowed to select any weighted subset of journals and conferences.
Thoughts 