getting rankled over rankings
I’m tired just reading the headlines from weblawgs complaining about the U.S.News law school rankings. I sure hope everybody gets over it soon (him, too). The professors — whose egos appear to be quite threatened — seem more frenzied than the prospective law students. (see Law.com Daily NewsWire, 04-05-04)
Of course, something as complicated and as highly-subjective as choosing the best law school will never be handled in a manner that pleases all affected persons and institutions — if only because lawyers are argumentative and homo sapiens are sore losers. It seems awfully foolish for anyone to give significance to a school’s moving a few notches up or down on any one list in any one year.
Stewing over school stats seems like the rankest sort of snobbery — or insecurity. Alternative approaches and ideas for improving the process can be useful and thought-provoking, but a little less whining would be nice.
- Afterthought (04-05-04): Serendipity is the salvation of the lazy editor. So, having no new posting today, I couldn’t resist sharing with you the thoughts of Kurt L. Schmoke, dean of the Howard University School of Law, on law school rankings. They appear in an article from this month’s Washington Lawyer, which serendipitously showed up in my mail box this afternoon. ( A Conversation With Kurt L. Schmoke, April 2004). Here’s what Dean Schmoke has to say (emphases added):
What effect do U.S. News & World Report–type rankings have on legal education in general?
I come out of a competitive environment in politics where you get judged daily, and every four years people get their opportunity to pass judgment in the election. Being judged, or ranked, is not a bad thing for a school, but personally I question the methodology in the U.S. News system where 40 percent of the grade for a law school is based on reputation among your peers.
That has led to an incredible flood of material from law schools: each dean floods deans at other schools with literature about everything they are doing, and we have web sites highlighting our programs. This ranking system has generated a new paper chase, with deans trying to affect the perception of other deans. It is driven by the need to put yourself on the radar screen of your colleagues, so that when they get a survey they will say, “Oh yes, I remember Tulane has a Caribbean law program.” You don’t know anything about the program, but you remember getting the brochure.
The good aspect of the rankings is that it is helpful to some students trying to decide where they want to go to law school, because it raises questions that they can look into.
Does that rating system affect Howard at all?
It does to some extent. Potential applicants ask me about our rating because they want to make sure that they go to a place that is going to give them a competitive edge when they enter the marketplace. That said, most of our students recognize that the ranking methods say very little about schools below the elite, well-endowed top 10.
How do you judge the University of Washington next to the University of Indiana on a national ranking? To put 187 law schools into a national ranking system and judge schools that are state oriented against schools that are nationally oriented is really difficult.I have found that our students understand that. The rankings have not hurt us in terms of the number of applications we receive, but I know that applicants read the reports and consider it. However, I think they come to Howard for reasons other than our rank in the U.S. News survey.
Personal note: Kurt Schmoke was a classmate of mine in law school.. He was one of the few students whose comments in class I consistently valued. And, thanks to a winning personality, he was one of an even smaller group of classmates who I actually hoped to see again after graduation. Unfortunately, our paths have not crossed. I’m just a little envious of how little he’s aged, from his photos, since 1976.
- Update (04-05-04): Scheherazade has a very good post today, You Can’t Know, for those trying to decide which law school to choose.
- The JURIST Paper Chase has compiled links (04-05-04) showing that “Major movers in the 2005 US News and World Report rankings are responding in very different ways to their upward moves.”