In other news, the sun still rises in the east.

UNC-Chapel Hill has defended one of its long-held titles, earning, yet again, the "best value in public higher education" tag from Kiplinger, a finance magazine.

UNC-CH has received this designation every year since 1998. 

This year, a twist. In its explanation about why UNC-CH is so affordable, Kiplinger makes reference to the university's hiring of Bain & Company, the private consultant that took a close look at the institution's administrative and financial functions to look for waste and inefficiency.

It was a controversial move at first on campus, but in the greater world of higher education, several big institutions took note and followed UNC's lead. 

NCSU is 10th on this list, by the way, and several other North Carolina colleges make the grade as well.

Those esteemed judges of city life over at Kiplinger have announced their 2008 top 10 cities in the U.S. to live, work and play. At first glance, the list appears to be a validation for Raleigh, which ranks second behind the no-zoning utopia of Houston. On closer inspection, however, the list puts Raleigh with some strange company. Among the other cities making the list are Omaha, Provo, Fayetteville, DeMoines, Colorado Springs and Boise.

While we have long ago given up attempting to understand the logic of these rankings, this list seems particularly arbitrary. (Raleigh's ranking isn't all that surprising because the people who make these lists absolutely love Raleigh for some reason. If there was a top 10 list of the best cities located next to rivers, we're quite certain Raleigh would make it.) But some of these other places are not exactly synonymous with playing and partying. A few of them even seem like places that people might try to get away from for various reasons.

We're also highly suspicious of any rankings that rely heavily on this concept of "The Creative Class," which really just seems like an attempt to turn the world into a giant advertising agency where people are either creatives or noncreatives. What we really want to know is do people actually decide where to move based on these lists? Are there lots of recently arrived families in Raleigh that could have just as easily ended up in Boisie or Omaha?