I just came across this randomly and have to say it is very well written and realistic view of the effects that U.S. News Rankings have had on legal education. Schools are caught in the Catch 22 presented in the article.
http://www.lsac.org/LsacResources/Research/GR/GR-07-02.pdfPage 27 of the ReportYou have people who focus on whether or not the rankings are in fact valid, whether they really show anything,
whether the methodology is good, and so on. And those debates can seem endless at times as everybody kind of
decries the rankings. On the flip side you have the pragmatic reality of the rankings. … Whatever the validity of
the methodology, it’s difficult to pretend that the rankings don’t matter. I mean prospective students use them;
employers use them; university administrators use them. So whether we in legal academics think they’re valid
or not, whether they’re reflective or not, the truth is that I don’t think you can just ignore them. Page 7
This is the sad part whether you support or hate the rankings. Page 10
Reputational rating is the most heavily weighted criterion in the USN ranking formula and therefore has
become an obvious target of attention.
Law schools are spending substantial amounts of money15 on brochures and other
marketing publications that are distributed to those who have a vote, or even might have a vote, in the USN survey (e.g.,
other deans, administrators, faculty members). Administrators note that they receive these brochures throughout the year,
but they arrive in very large quantities in the weeks immediately prior to the October release of the USN reputation
survey, what one marketing director referred to as “sweeps week.” Many report that these mailings usually end up in the
garbage unread.16 Regardless of their effect on reputation ratings, these brochures represent a large expenditure of
resources that could be used for any of a variety of other purposes. Among the alternatives mentioned were new faculty
members, writing centers, scholarships, and library volumes—purposes that, according to most administrators, would
more directly benefit the school in terms of educational quality. Not surprisingly, this is a hot-button issue for these
administrators:
I could hire a faculty member for the amount of money spent on this; I could support twenty students for this
price; I could buy a substantial number of books for our library; all of which strike me as what this enterprise
ought to be about … I could almost support an entire legal writing program, I could fund a clinic, I could do any
of those things. Instead I’m putting out a magazine which goes out to people who aren’t interested in it and
perhaps to some who are interested in it. But those who are interested in it would be the alums, not the federal
judges in Milwaukee.
-This is really bad because students could be much better served if this magazine with no authority choose to not make money of this system. I am completely for ranking the top 25 or so schools. This is because no expenditure needs to be spent on determining these elite level schools. Harvard Grads are hired each year and judges, firms, etc can make realistic evaluations on the quality of the graduates because they are scattered through the country. However, you are unlikley to find many Marquette Grads outside of Wisconsin so why in Gods name is Marquette spending money on sending brochures etc to Southwestern or having Williamette send information to a Federal Judge in Nebraska? Why is all I can ask it's so stupid and inefficient, sadly the only people that really get hurt by this whole system our the student's whose tuition dollars are going to boosting a schools ranking instead of improving the educational experience.
Complaints About the Rankings Page 7
Many deans criticize the quality of USN measures. To take one example, many suggest that respondents to the
reputational surveys are ill-informed about the schools they evaluate and that their evaluations are strategic responses. As
one dean put it:
The data on the reputational survey are so bad … I don’t understand how you get anything other than some
consensus… There is clear consensus of the 10 or 12 schools that should get a five [where five is “outstanding”
and one is “marginal”]. How is there any difference between Chicago and Yale based on reputation? Anyone
who doesn’t put Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Michigan, NU, or Berkeley as a five, is either being instrumental or is
an idiot.
The Positives of the Rankings. Page 8 USN has forced law schools to place students well; to do a better job of this. Before [rankings] there wasn’t a
number that was running around. … In the past a dean could pontificate about how great his program was, but
now it’s harder to pull the wool over people’s eyes. With these numbers, you can’t just talk. The basic things
that law schools do are still all there: we want to get the best students, the best faculty, and we want our students
to be successful. Our job and our career goals haven’t changed, but now we have metrics. I think it’s just like
Consumer Reports for cars. ( There is no doubt there should be some statistics to make sure law schools don't become like politics and make just make thigns up out of thin air, but I still don't understand why they don't simply rank the top 25-50 schools so they can all strive to be in this category. If they are not in the upper tier of schools then why distinguish between Tier 2/3/4?
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