The system is incoherent. First, if a college puts on a race and some post-collegiate scrub like myself, very post-collegiate, runs in it, that does not mean it is not a college race. Would it matter only if post-collegiates played a role in pacing or drafting by being ahead of the collegian in question at any point in the race? That would be tough to ascertain. Why should it matter if it is not a college putting on the race? An example would be Millrose, where I believe Edward Cheserek set the college indoor mile record of 3:52, just broken this year at Arkansas by Cooper Teare (and Cole Hocker). So, if pro races count during a college season, what about between seasons? Why not the summer if that is considered to be in-between, say, junior and senior track and xc? If post-NCAA doesn't count for every class, why not? What is the difference? Someone like Hobbs Kessler is actually an interesting case here, because if his record doesn't count for high school because it was at a pro meet and it doesn't count because it was post-season, and he was a so-called rising or incoming freshman at NAU, shouldn't it have counted as the college record, since it was superior to the previous 3:35 of Josh Kerr? Or, is there a special category that we should have a separate record for people who are no longer high school students but not yet college students, even if they are enrolled in college for the fall several months early? And if graduation dates were the issue, then someone could actually set a college record later than someone else whose time was excluded because of an earlier graduation day, which is absurd.
Also, another collegian to break Jim Ryun's post-season collegiate record might have been Nourredine Morceli. According to Wiki, he ran at an American community college from 1988 to 1990, and in the summer of 1990, he ran the world-leading time of 3:32.60. At the time, that would have been the fastest post-season collegiate 1500m.
1990 3:32.60 Bologna (ITA) 18 JUL 1990