Bloggers Debate the Law School Rankings

Bob Morse is no statistician! A fifth-grader could do better!

Is the 2010 part-time law ranking methodology meant to be a joke?

Morse spends all this time building up the anticipation of the "all new part-time law rankings" and then flops in the end? I thought the idea was to get an accurate guaging of part-time programs using actual submitted data and not an 8th grade popularity contest.

Hey Bobbo, if you are going to resort to popularity contests (like the dilettante that you are) and ask school admins to "rank up to 15 schools" then (hint) only post the rankings for the top 15 schools! A fifth grader could come up with a better ranking methodology than you. These new rankings are nothing short of disgraceful and I am not referring to any particular school but, rather, the childish methodolgy which detracts from the credibility of all of the rankings in general (if it ever existed).

PT

It is a conflict of interest for GULC and GWU authors to argue against separate PT rankings without disclosing how much they rely on PT.

They can't have it both ways - either publish separate rankings, or include the PT data in the JD program.

And yes, I'm at a school with no PT. We've never gamed this system.

An Overlooked Point

At any decent law school, for every good student who transfers out, there's another one who excelled at a different school and wants to transfer in. So schools can replenish their talent through a kind of "trickle-up" system, where only the weakest law schools as designated by their inability to produce at least a small group of overacheiving students - will suffer, because of their rankings.

Even so, not all transfers are for "upgrade reasons" (the simple desire to attend more prestigious or higher-ranked schools); some students make what can be termed "lateral moves" to similarly ranked and prestiged schools for geographic or personal reasons.

Moreover, part-time, working students may wish to remain in school but take job relocation, giving other schools compelling reasons to accept them.

Still, a third reason the "Triple-A Farm System" you speak about may not be so is the existence of "visiting students", who will receive their degrees from their original schools, but, for various reasons, wish to study at different law schools for their second and/or third year(s).

No Separate Rankings!

Recently disseminated rumors of separate rankings have been scaring many prospective law students and rightly so. The result of such an augmentation to the current rankings would be, in effect, punishing the students rather than the institutions, which go through extraordinary lengths to cheat the system. The only fair way to mitigate the rankings game and those who unfairly cheat, would be to have one single ranking of law schools as opposed to two separate ones. After all, it seems a little ridiculous and redundant that there would be two rankings for law schools as opposed to all the other disciplines, which have limited rankings (and, not suprisingly, have been less affected by elitism).

So, please, do the prudent thing and, if part-time rankings have to be created at all, then include those statistics in the overall rankings!

But on a personal note, if it were up to me, I would do away with all law school rankings in general as they are not an accurate indication of educational quality but nothing more than an arbitrary set of variables comprised to inject snobbism into already snobbish profession. Not to mention, they corrupt the minds of the impressionable youth with materialism, focusing on a futile pursuit of high salaries rather than focusing on the more noble but antiquated pursuit of actual LEARNING!

No separate rankings!

Recently disseminated rumors of a separate rankings have been scaring many prospective law students and rightly so. The result of such an augmentation to the current rankings would be, in effect, punishing the students rather than the institutions, which go through extraordinary lengths to cheat the system. The only fair way to mitigate the rankings game and those who unfairly cheat, would be to have one single ranking of law schools as opposed to two separate ones. After all, it seems a little ridiculous and redundant that there would be two rankings for law schools as opposed to all the other disciplines, which have limited rankings (and, not suprisingly, have been less affected by elitism).

So, please, do the prudent thing and, if part-time rankings have to be created at all, then include those statistics in the overall rankings!

But on a personal note, if it were up to me, I would do away with all law rankings in general as they are not an accurate indication of educational quality but nothing more than an arbitrary set of variables comprised to inject snobbism into already snobbish profession. Not to mention, they corrupt the minds of the impressionable youth with materialism, focusing on a futile pursuit of high salaries rather than focusing on the more noble but antiquated pursuit of acutal LEARNING.

The unfortunate reality of these surveys

Last year, I went back to my alma mater to teach for a semester. I was appalled at the depths to which a majority of the faculty, led by the dean, had stooped in order to "play the rankings" game.

After an elongated political process, during which the dean twisted some arms and ruffled more than a few feathers, the faculty took a secret ballot vote, which passed by a slim margin. Under the resolution, the dean was authorized to take reasonable measures in pursuit of higher rankings in US News.

This produced some troubling effects. One of the key areas in which our "regional" law school always ranks low is in student funding, when calculated on a student/teacher ratio. There are two possible ways to increase funding per student: A) hire more faculty or B) reduce the student population.

Regretably, the school opted for the more economical of the two and will embark on a "short term" plan to decrease the incoming classes over the next 3 to 5 years, from current levels of 240 back down to about 200. Of course, this plan also enhances the student/faculty ratio, another key US News survey ingredient.

Although one may argue the actual merits of a lower student/faculty ratio, the reality of the approach taken by my alma mater is beyond dispute: Displaced students will consist primarily of economically disadvantaged minority groups.

This is a direct side-effect of the enormously illogical system employed by US News to sell more magazines.

The system has little, if any merit and should be abandoned. No telling how many other schools are fighting an uphill battle in the name of improving perceived quality of their schools.

Chuck (former adjunct at a state law school in TX)

p.s. The distinction between day and night students does not warrant additional consideration. Part-time students are generally older and wiser to the world, but they certainly have less time to study, irrespective of their lighter load. It's just another obvious attempt to sell more magazines.

t61a

c422t

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.