Two top business schools announced this week that they would no longer release to the news media certain information used in creating college rankings, a move that suggests a growing disdain for such lists, which critics have long argued are misleading and unfair.

Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School said they would stop providing contact information for current and former graduate students, which had helped newspapers and magazines compare the students' levels of satisfaction with their education.

The decision was announced after Business Week was denied the information for its biennial survey of M.B.A. programs, which the magazine has conducted since 1988. The schools will continue to provide basic data, like class size.

The decision was intended to protest the rankings, which are often skewed and simplistic, according to David Lampe, a Harvard spokesman. "We advise students in our admission process that what matters is not what school is first or second but rather the match between the student and the school," said Mr. Lampe. "The rankings make it look like all the schools are the same and all the students are the same."

In a statement, Patrick T. Harker, dean of the Wharton School, wrote that colleges "have allowed rankings to define us, not only to the outside world, but to ourselves as well." He also cited a "widely growing consensus" among college leaders that such rankings are "driven more by editorial agendas than by objective data."

Business Week responded in a statement, posted on its Web site on Tuesday, arguing that the rankings help students make informed decisions about which schools to attend. The statement then went a step further, calling the refusal to provide information "troubling" and seeming to link Harvard and Wharton to some of the scandals that have rocked Wall Street in recent years.

"Just as investors today are clamoring for more transparency on the part of companies," the statement said, "so should students expect a similar degree of openness and cooperation from the very schools that nurture new business leaders."

Limiting the information available to students was not the reason for the decision, according to Mr. Lampe, the Harvard spokesman. He said Harvard and other schools have been working with the Graduate Management Admission Council to develop a better way to provide prospective students with the facts they need.

"Our interest is not in restricting information, but in improving the usefulness and transparency of that information," he said. "The media haven't paid particular attention to the rigor of their method or the real needs of the students."