Battered by funding cuts, bombarded by the White House and braced for demographic changes set to send enrollment into a nosedive, America’s colleges and universities have spent this year in flux.

But one of higher education’s rituals resurfaced again Tuesday, when U.S. News & World Report published the college rankings that many administrators obsessively track and routinely malign.

And, at least in the judgment of U.S. News, all of the headline-making upheaval has led to … well, a lot of stability.

Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University retained the top three spots in the publisher’s rankings of national universities. Stanford University kept its place at No. 4, though Yale University also joined it there. Williams College remained U.S.

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