Legal News

Dean Calls on Peers to Unite, Kick U.S. News Rankings to the Curb

By Dan Slater

Update: This just in from Robert Morse, director of data research at U.S. News & World Report, in response to this post:

U.S. News is not forcing any law school dean to change school policy in order to improve in the rankings. One hopes that the proper education of potential lawyers is the driving force in school admissions policies. The U.S. News rankings also do not, as the dean implies, have a negative impact on legal education and law school admissions, but provide prospective students with information about the relative merits of law schools that is not available elsewhere.

If a law school refuses to provide U.S. News directly with statistical data from their annual ABA accreditation data questionnaire, then U.S. News still can get almost all of the data from the ABA website. U.S. News would still be able to rank a law school, even if it refused to participate. U.S. News will not make a decision on whether to modify its formula until late fall 2008 or early 2009.

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However, it seems beyond debate that it is truly depressing that law deans, who have so many important educational issues to address, feel the pressure they undeniably feel to make important decisions about their schools in response to a popular magazine’s educationally unsophisticated decisions about ranking methodology. — Gary J. Simson, dean of Case Western law

It’s no secret that law school administrators cater to the ranking methodology of the mighty U.S. News & World Report. To date, one way to keep your ranking up has been to admit students with sub-par LSATs and GPAs into the part-time program only, since those students’ so-called entering credentials will then be excluded from the U.S. News rankings calculus.

But now U.S. News is considering revising that calculus to include part-time students’ entering credentials. And that news, at least for one dean, is reason enough to say, well, enough!

Writes Case Western Dean Gary Simson (pictured) in today’s NLJ: “I propose that law school faculties and administrations treat the announcement as a wake-up call and recognize how much they have allowed themselves to be at the mercy of editors whose primary interest is selling magazines, rather than providing a means of ranking schools that actually might promote the things that make for genuine greatness in a law school.”

Why, precisely, are the rankings so pernicious? Dean Simson explains:

Deans feel obliged to become experts in the ways of winning in the rankings, and in seeking higher rankings; the faculty and administration all too often make structural decisions about the law school with the rankings foremost in mind. In an effort to boost entering students’ credentials they cut, often quite dramatically, the number of students in the first-year class. Then, to make up for the lost income to their heavily tuition-dependent school, they increase, often quite dramatically, the number of transfer students or LL.M. students and they develop a part-time program or expand an existing one. They economize by not filling faculty lines vacated by retirements and departures and by downsizing the staff. They diminish or even eliminate need-based financial aid in favor of using scholarship money to target incoming students who will boost the median LSAT and GPA.

We’ve reached out to U.S. News and will let you know when we hear back.

LB’ers: This parade of horribles has been echoed before, by such deans as Buffalo’s Makau Mutua. Tell us what you think? Is time to kick the U.S. News rankings out the door?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 23, 2008 (boomark / email).