U.S. News & World Report released its  annual rankings of the best colleges in the U.S last week. But should those rankings really matter to prospective students?

The answer, according to Michael Horn, is no.

Horn, the co-author of a newly released book, "Choosing College: How to Make Better Learning Decisions Throughout Your Life," said only one thing should matter to those students and their parents: why?

“We are really searching for how people can understand why thy are going to college," he said. "That’s the first question, because if you don’t understand your 'why,' you can make decisions that put you at pretty big financial risk."

“Understanding your 'why' helps you prioritize what’s important to you in a college,” Horn said, adding that students usually default to the rankings, which do not use criteria around what success looks like for a student.

Horn, who attended Yale University and the Harvard Business School, said in writing the book, he and Bob Moesta, who also holds a degree from Harvard Business School, tried to understand what’s causing students to make the choices that they make using their own language.

The hope, Horn said, is that the book in many ways serves as a Rosetta Stone of sorts to translate parents speak and children speak and vice versa “so that parents can understand that when they say certain things to kids or when they send certain messages or they increase the social pressure to go to college, regardless of whether the student is excited about a certain school, that they can actually cause some significant repercussions in terms of financial outcomes.”

Horn said they found a significant number of students go to college because someone expects them to go. “It’s just the next logical step and they are doing it to fulfill someone else’s wishes for them,’’ he said, adding that of those students, 74% are either dropouts or transfers, “and well over 50% said time spent in school was a complete waste of time and money.”

Horn said that there is a lot of rhetoric around college debt. “But college debt can be a good thing if you graduate, in the sense that it’s an investment in your future and you are going to have an income to pay it back,” he said. On the other hand, if you don't have a desire to pursue a degree and don’t graduate, your chances of defaulting on the debt just skyrockets, and just for doing what your parents wanted, he said.

Research has shown that many college graduates and student loan borrowers have regrets about their decision to enroll in the schools they did because of the financial burden placed on them. Student loan debt has become one of the biggest consumer debt categories, with more than 44 million Americans responsible for a portion of the $1.6 trillion total.

Horn said they found that students are choosing college for five core reasons: enroll to get in the best school, do what’s expected of them, to get away, to step it up and to extend themselves. He explained that it’s important for students to understand which one of these best fits them because it completely changes what success looks like for them.

As an example, he explained that the student who wants to get away, the criteria for that decision and the definition of success are dramatically different from someone who is going for other reasons.

Horn and Moesta have three primary recommendations for parents and students. The first, they said, is many students would benefit from taking a gap year before they go to college. And that does not mean gallivanting around Europe and backpacking aimlessly, but spending a year working a few jobs, doing internship or apprenticeships, taking a few online courses or attending coding bootcamp to “learn more about yourself and develop some passion and a sense of purpose in your life so that you can make a choice that you can be fired up about,” he said.

Secondly, students need to realize that taking an unusual path is a good thing. “It’s a way to differentiate yourself and it can be strategic to create value for yourself by not being like everyone else and standing apart from the crowd,” he said, adding that student they came across fell into the rat race of following the rankings and following what their peers are doing.”

Another advice the book puts forth for students is that they should view themselves as lifelong learners in the ever-changing economy, where the shelf-life of skills is constantly shrinking. “With the half-life of knowledge constantly changing—artificial intelligence, automation, outsourcing and things of that nature—you’re going to have to reskill,” Horn said.

“So, it’s much more important to view learning and your education as a journey as opposed to, ‘I am going to college and that’s it.’ And when you step back and have that viewpoint, you realize you don’t have to get into this rat race to get in ‘the best school’ or climb the ladder above your peers because, really, you are going to be taking different pathways as you navigate through life,” he said.

To be clear, Horn still believes college is a good investment, but the key is, you have to graduate, he said. “What people don’t realize is that roughly 40% of students do not graduate from a four-year program within six years, and if you don’t graduate, it’s a terrible investment. It’s that simple,” he said.

He added that college is especially a great investment for students from low-income households where the student is the first to go to college and gets into an Ivy League school. “You should go because that would be life-changing. But if you get into a school that costs a lot of money, doesn’t have a great brand, doesn't have a great alumni network, that’s probably not a great investment,” he said.

Horn agrees that the societal pressure placed on going to college is great, and it’s going to be up to employers, state governments and parents to change the landscape.

“Employers are literally requiring degree for jobs that 30 years ago they would not have required them for,” Horn said. That has got to stop, he said.

Employers, he said, need to get smarter about hiring. “They need to identify the actual skills and knowledge they need people to have and start screening for that as oppose to a degree,” he said.

Government, Horn said, is fed up with the high cost of college and is looking for solutions. “I think one thing they could do is to stop requiring degrees for government posts. That could send a real message not only to the employer community but also societally that we are not just looking for the degree but skills and knowledge for the job,” he said.

As for parents, Horn said they should step back and realize it’s an exciting time right now because of the many new educational pathways that are emerging. “There are a lot of options and I think we need to be more inquisitive as parents and be open to these options,” he said