I really wonder why Columbia even cares: it's a globally well known ivy league school obviously producing a good education and is in NYC.* Doesn't US News need Columbia more than the other way around?
* No I have no connection to the school except I do have some friends who teach there and some others who attended decades ago.
I think professors and the actual scholars there don't really care. However, administration cares because ranking is tied to both how many undergraduates students apply and how much they can charge these students. If college rankings didn't matter financially then I hazard that Columbia would've had questionable numbers to begin with.
That said I agree that being an Ivy in NYC certainly was a major contributor to its more recent rise in the rankings and applications.
If you're in the small top 'n' I think the prestige goes the other way. Will anyone care if MIT is +1 or -1 some year? I assume those top schools can just run themselves the way they want and still get highly ranked.
And if US news were serious they could simply have kicked columbia out for a year, but it would have hurt them to do so. They'd probably do it for a small college ranked 100 or below though.
I'd be embarrassed for Columbia that they gamed the numbers. Outside that small n though, I presume gaming the numbers is commonplace.
* No I have no connection to the school except I do have some friends who teach there and some others who attended decades ago.