Brooklyn's Incorrect US News Rankings

[Viking Quest]

Here's an update and Brooklyn's explanation:

aws_survey_response_&slreturn=1" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202430524801&US_News_looks_into_Brooklyn_L aws_survey_response_&slreturn=1

Sounds like Brooklyn clearly gave false data.  They try to both justify why they would give false data and then say it was inadvertent (can it really be both? Sound like saying "I didn't steal a car from that guy and crash it, but if I did it was because the guy owed me some money, and anyways it was broke when I got it."

[Miss P]

Here's an update and Brooklyn's explanation:

aws_survey_response_&slreturn=1" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202430524801&US_News_looks_into_Brooklyn_L aws_survey_response_&slreturn=1

Sounds like Brooklyn clearly gave false data.  They try to both justify why they would give false data and then say it was inadvertent (can it really be both? Sound like saying "I didn't steal a car from that guy and crash it, but if I did it was because the guy owed me some money, and anyways it was broke when I got it."

It says BLS intentionally left out the part-time data and explicitly told U.S. News that it was doing so.  It also inadvertently filled out the "whole class" number with only the full-time data when it should have left that space blank as well.  You can choose not to believe BLS's explanation, but there's nothing inconsistent about it.  And certainly U.S. News was on notice and should have caught the error (even if you don't hold the editors to the standards to which you would hold ordinary journalists -- which I don't understand, but that's a question for another day).

[JayCLS]

Brooklyn was obviously disingenuous here.  Let's not sugar coat this.  They know that if they include their part time numbers they will drop in the rankings so they are taking some kind of self-satisfying moral stance on the matter that is convenient for them.  They thought they'd get away with reporting only full time numbers and got caught (too late for publication but not too late for public humiliation).

These schools have been using the part time/full time thing for financial gain for way too long and it needs to stop.

Also, think about how unfair this is to the schools that included part time numbers in their submission(per the instructions from USNews).  This looks very bad for Brooklyn...

[Pop Up Video]

Cincinnati is actually full-time only

[Matthies]

Cincinnati is actually full-time only

wow since when? I applied to their PT program I'm pretty sure 5 years ago or maybe that was Indy can't remeber.

[Pop Up Video]

Not sure, probably at least three years though.

[Miss P]

Brooklyn was obviously disingenuous here.  Let's not sugar coat this.  They know that if they include their part time numbers they will drop in the rankings so they are taking some kind of self-satisfying moral stance on the matter that is convenient for them.  They thought they'd get away with reporting only full time numbers and got caught (too late for publication but not too late for public humiliation).

These schools have been using the part time/full time thing for financial gain for way too long and it needs to stop.

Also, think about how unfair this is to the schools that included part time numbers in their submission(per the instructions from USNews).  This looks very bad for Brooklyn...

Eh.  Omitting the part-time numbers was self-serving, but Brooklyn claims it wrote a letter to U.S. News explaining why it was doing so.  This hardly constitutes fraud of any sort.  USNWR should have caught the error and ranked Brooklyn accordingly (or left Brooklyn out of the rankings).

[JayCLS]

What they should do is rank Brooklyn last based on a 0.0 GPA/0 LSAT. Then put an asterisk on it.

Again, not fair to the other schools who properly report their numbers. If Brooklyn is embarrassed about the numbers of their incoming part-time students then they can change that on their own.  They are responsible for it.

[Miss P]

What they should do is rank Brooklyn last based on a 0.0 GPA/0 LSAT. Then put an asterisk on it.

Again, not fair to the other schools who properly report their numbers. If Brooklyn is embarrassed about the numbers of their incoming part-time students then they can change that on their own.  They are responsible for it.

No, it should either rank Brooklyn based on accurate numbers or leave Brooklyn out of the rankings altogether, listing its full-time numbers as full-time numbers.  It doesn't make sense to compound the errors in the rankings by using even more inaccurate information in the rankings.  This desire to somehow punish Brooklyn doesn't make sense to me.  If you care about whether applicants have access to good data, you should want U.S. News to publish and use the best data available.

It's perfectly "fair" for Brooklyn to choose to omit the part-time numbers as long as it is upfront about doing so and accepts the consequences.  What's not fair is for U.S. News to rank Brooklyn using full-time numbers when it ranks all other schools with part-time programs using both full-time and part-time numbers.

[vap]

One minor change throws all the rankings into question.  See Theodore P. Seto, Understanding the U.S. News Law School Rankings, 60 SMU L. Rev. 493 (2007), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=937017.

Consider this excerpt from Professor Seto's article:

     I begin with my conclusions. First, U.S. News’ law school “ranks” are unreliable – that is, they are subject to significant random error. . . .
 
     The first conclusion can be illustrated by a simple example involving a change in the numbers of U.S. News's lowest-ranked school--which I will call the “bottom anchor” but otherwise leave unnamed. Assume that the reported nine-month employment rate for graduates of the bottom anchor falls by just one percentage point and nothing else changes at any school in the country. . . .

     As one might expect, nothing happens to the bottom anchor's overall score (by definition, zero) or rank (180th). But this tiny change wreaks havoc on the relative ranking of the top one hundred law schools. Seattle and San Francisco jump six ranks, Fordham jumps from 32nd to 27th, and Rutgers Camden, San Diego, and Indiana Indianapolis each jump four. Houston, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon, by contrast, each drop three ranks. Overall, forty-one of the top one hundred schools change rank. Fordham's dean gets a bonus. Fingers are pointed and voices raised at Houston. All because of a trivial change in the employment statistics of a single school far away in the spreadsheet. Stranger still, if the bottom anchor's nine-month employment rate falls an additional four percentage points (that is, a total of five percentage points)--and nothing else changes at any school in the country--most of these effects disappear, but the reordering moves into the Top Ten. University of California (UC) Berkeley and Virginia both drop from 8th to 9th place. At the other schools named above, it is as if nothing had ever happened.

     Prospective students, employers, and faculty members, reading that UC Berkeley and Virginia have dropped to 9th place, may decide to go elsewhere. Regents, trustees, and university presidents, reading that Seattle, San Francisco, and Fordham have advanced dramatically in the rankings, may record this accomplishment in the apparently responsible deans' performance evaluations. What the foregoing example suggests, however, is that basing decisions on this kind of difference or change in U.S. News ranks is unwarranted.

Id. at 509-10 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).

And keep in mind that there were several other schools this year with inaccurate data (Nebraska, and one other I can't remember).