US News & World Report announces changes to methodology that critics said hampered diversity and affordability
US News & World Report will change how its rankings of law schools are calculated in response to a revolt among schools that say the closely watched list hampers their diversity and affordability.
The magazine’s changes in methodology announced on Monday in a letter to law school deans include an increased weight on outcomes for students – such as bar exam passage and employment – and a reduced weight on assessment surveys from academics, lawyers, and judges. The rankings will also give increased weight to school-funded fellowships, many of which steer students toward careers in public service.
“While we know it is challenging for diverse institutions to be ranked across a common data set, we all have the same goal – to provide the best information to prospective students so they can make one of the most important decisions of their careers. US News is committed to this purpose,” the US News executive chairman and CEO, Eric Gertler, said in a statement.
Last autumn a majority of the top 14 law schools announced they would no longer submit data for the rankings. The magazine, which has published the rankings since the 1980s, will continue to rank schools that choose not to participate, relying on publicly available metrics to construct its list.
Yale Law School, the first to withdraw from the rankings, said the ranking system was biased against programs meant to boost socioeconomic diversity and support the pursuit of public service careers. Dean Heather Gerken said the new changes would not persuade Yale to rejoin the rankings process.
“Having a window into the operations and decision-making process at US News in recent weeks has only cemented our decision to stop participating in the rankings,” Gerken said in a statement.
Following Yale’s decision to withdraw in November, other law schools followed, including Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Michigan.
US News said in the letter to deans that it had been in conversation with more than 100 representatives of law schools and that a shared set of concerns emerged, which prompted the changes in rankings.
The changes will be reflected in the 2023-2024 rankings, which are expected to be published this spring.
Those changes do not address all the concerns raised by law school leadership. The magazine said it was working on addressing additional issues raised by law school leaders around the consideration of loan forgiveness and repayment assistance programs, need-based financial aid, and diversity and socioeconomic factors.
Legal academics have long complained that the US News rankings methodology incentivizes schools to drive up tuition and direct more financial aid to applicants with high test scores and undergraduate grades rather than those most in need.
Law school admission consultant Mike Spivey told Reuters on Monday that he expects a slew of additional law schools to bow out of the rankings now that they will be based on ABA data.
“The big thing is it’s all going to be public,” he said. “There’s no reason for schools to stay in.”
A US News spokeswoman on Monday said that the upcoming rankings will not include expenditures-per-student, average student debt at graduation, or employment at graduation, which are metrics the ABA does not collect or publish, but which US News asks schools to provide.
Source: The Guardian