QU law school may follow Yale pullout from rankings

NEW HAVEN — With Yale University’s Law School abandoning U.S. News and World Report rankings and hoping to lead the way for other institutions, another Connecticut law school said it will consider whether to make a similar move.

Yale Law School announced Wednesday it would stop sharing pertinent data with the for-profit magazine’s rankings over concerns the ranking system is “profoundly flawed,” after the institution has claimed the top spot every year for the past three decades.

In a follow-up interview Thursday afternoon, Dean Heather Gerken said she hopes Yale will take the lead in making data transparent and accessible so that every student can make the decisions they need to make.

“I think these students did not know that the U.S. News was sending them a false signal, they didn’t know how flawed the rankings were,” Gerken said. “So now, I’m glad that they know to be very careful about relying on U.S. News, given if they are interested in doing public interest work or if they are lowincome students who care about debt loads.”

In response to the action, not only from Yale but also from Harvard University’s Law School, Quinnipiac University School of Law has echoed similar concerns with the ranking methodology.

Kevin Barry, an interim dean at Quinnipiac, said the school thanked Yale and Harvard for raising “very legitimate concerns.”

He said the school believes that metrics used by the U.S. News are flawed as they give disproportionate weight to the wealth and familiarity of a law school.

“At the same time, we understand that for some students, alumni and employers, the rankings may retain some influence,” Barry said. “For that reason, we will carefully consider whether to follow Yale’s and Harvard’s lead in the days ahead.”

The only other university in the state with a law school is University of Connecticut; a school official wasn’t available to comment Friday.

University of California Berkeley’s Law School announced Thursday it also will not participate in the U.S. News rankings, becoming the third most-soughtafter law school to do so.

Yale’s Gerken outlined her reasoning in a detailed statement released Wednesday morning on the law school’s website, arguing “the rankings process is undermining the core commitments of the legal profession.”

Those commitments, she said, include “supporting students seeking public interest careers,” “encouraging graduates to pursue advanced degrees” and “admitting and providing aid to students with enormous promise who may come from modest means.”

For example, Gerken said, participating law schools are deterred from accepting talented applicants with lower scores and/or poorer grades because 20 percent of a school’s ranking is premised on median LSAT score or GRE score and GPA.

Consequently, she said, “millions” in financial aid are meted out to the students who boast the best academic performance rather than the students who need it most.

“While academic scores are an important tool, they don’t always capture the full measure of an applicant,” Gerken said. “This heavily weighted metric imposes tremendous pressure on schools to overlook promising students, especially those who cannot afford expensive test preparation courses.”

The law school’s move, however, doesn’t preclude the university as a whole from submitting data to ranking systems, according to Karen Peart, Yale’s vice president for communications.

“This is a decision Yale Law School made independently, based on what is best for the institution,” Peart said, noting the School of Architecture did the same last year with its own rankings. “Each school must carefully consider what is best for their school and community.”

As many students still rely on overview information from the rankings, the law school dean said the school will continue to share data with prospective students “in a public, transparent and useful form.”

Asked for a concrete plan, Greken said the school is still in early conversations with education experts since the announcement was made just this week.

“This will be an ongoing conversation inside the school and with experts across the country to figure out how best to do this,” she said.