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Bloggers Debate the Law School Rankings
Since I wrote the blog post Changing the Law School Ranking Formula in late June, there has been a wide variety of views—pro and con—expressed on the subject. Listed below is a very small sampling of those opinions. It's a debate worth continuing.
The widely read TaxProf blog, edited by Paul Caron, associate dean of faculty at the University of Cincinnati law school, regularly covers the U.S. News law rankings. One of his latest posts is U.S. News Considers Two Changes to Law School Rankings Methodology.
Jason Solomon, a legal professor at the University of Georgia, has written numerous articles on the law rankings on Prawfs Blawg. His most recent take is Stanford, Harvard, Yale: A Sample Voters' Guide for This Fall's U.S. News Survey.
William Henderson, a law professor at Indiana University, chimes in with How has the Part-Time "Loophole" Affected Part- and Full-Time Enrollment? The Data.
Daniel J. Solove, a law school professor at George Washington University, writes the Concurring Opinions blog. His article is Should the US News Ranking Include Part-Time and Evening Law Students?
The Legal Research Plus blog, done by a team of advanced legal research instructors at Stanford Law School, weighs in on the deeper meaning of our law rankings. They recently wrote Of Rankings and Regulation: Are the U.S.News & World Report Rankings Really a Subversive Force in Legal Education?
The Shark, a blog written by students at many California law schools, has covered this issue extensively. One of their posts is How does the inclusion of part-timer data sway rankings, and what should we do about it?
The widely followed legal blog Above the Law offers U.S. News Mulls Over Methodological Modifications.
The online version of the ABA Journal has weighed in with Should LSATs for Evening Students Count in Rankings? It quotes former George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg's blog post for the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which Trachtenberg argues that U.S. News should not include part-time admission data in our familiar law school rankings but that we should consider doing a separate ranking of part-time law school programs.
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proposed changes on law school rankings
I have been following the discussion that has been taking place over the past few weeks and wanted to weigh in on the issues.
There is no doubt that some schools use the part-time program as an admissions alternative for lower LSAT candidates. As evidence, I would invite you to look at the recent ABA Guide. There are schools that show no applicants for a part-time program, but still show acceptances and enrollments in a part-time program, with a very different set of credentials. I am also sensitive to the concerns about pressure that schools with part-time programs will have if the admission credentials for both programs are aggregated. I do not think that these programs will really be at risk, as some have suggested. It may change somewhat the make-up of the students who are admitted to such programs. But the programs will survive. If the argument is that these programs are designed to accept a student body with lower numerical credentials, because of the age of the applicants and the use of alternative admissions criteria based on work experiences, then I suspect that some students who otherwise would be admitted to these programs will be denied admission if the credentials for full-time and part-time admissions are aggregated. What seems a greater evil is the invitation to force the lesser qualified (by numerical indicators) applicants into the part-time program, thereby avoiding their inclusion in the reported data.
As we reach the height of the transfer student recruitment season, we are creating in legal education a farm team or Triple A system where students who would not have been considered for admission on the basis of the numerical indicators are invited and encouraged to transfer, with essentially no risk for the accepting institution. The pain for the transferring institution is the investment in support programs that enabled students to succeed beyond the expected performance, based on LSAT and GPA, and the loss of students at the higher end of the class, who are most likely to succeed in law school and then on the bar exam. Requiring an inclusion of those students in the numerical indicators reported to US News would have a deterrent effect on these practices, even though they will not be eliminated entirely.
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