By Aaron Miller And David Young-
The Campbell University School of Law has withdrawn from participation in the U.S. News and World Report’s Best Law Schools ranking, it has been revealed.
The Law School which says its principles are premised on moral convictions and has developed lawyers who possess moral conviction, social compassion and professional competence, and who view the law as a calling to serve others
.The school has been recognized by the American Bar Association (ABA) as having the nation’s top Professionalism.
Leonard and the Campbell Law faculty joins a number of other law schools in disagreeing with the U.S. News ranking system, like University of Virginia (UVA) School of Law, announced it will not provide information to U.S. News and World Report partly because its rankings “fail to capture much of what we value at UVA.
University Dean, J. Rich Leonard, (pictured) made the announcement in a circulated mail to to faculty, staff and students on Monday in an email.
Leonard’s statement made reference to concerns with both the ranking’s purpose and methodologies, among others.
The objection has sparked greater concerns about other ranking systems in the world which have not always been subject to intense scrutiny.
The ranking criteria used by many the few assessing bodies in both the U.S and the UK use different methodologies, all of which go a long way to measure the quality of an institution of learning.
The Times Higher Education Institution annually publishes rankings of Universities in the world, using a range of deterministic factors in gauging the relative standards of university and their rankings, with an emphasis on the research mission.
It is the only global university league table that judges research-intensive universities across all of their core missions; including teaching and the learning environment , volume, income.
Using 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators, it claims to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons. Its standards are globally respected, but not without its occassional critics.
The overall list is accompanied by 11 subject-specific rankings and the quality of research produced by universities and satisfaction of students.
However, there have been whispers in certain quarters that its system may overlook universities in countries like India and some parts of Africa that cannot afford the best quality of research, but still produce good teaching and top students.
Universities in South Africa like University of Capetown or Pretoria will be lucky to make the top 100 in the world, yet are known to be of very high standards.
They surely cannot compete for the top spot routinely held by the likes of Oxford University, Cambridge or Havard University, but may be deserving of a higher ranking than they are accorded.
The statement follows “The Campbell Law School faculty has decided not to participate this year in the U.S. News and World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings.
We are not opposed to objective rankings, but the reputational aspect of the U.S.
News rankings has always undervalued strong regional law schools. Additionally, the rankings do not sufficiently consider factors most critical to prospective students, such as bar passage and employment outcomes.
‘We believe objective evaluations that value factors like these better serve prospective students.
“As an example of the difference between objective and subjective rankings, in 2015 a North Carolina law professor at another school provided an alternative ranking based simply on student employment outcomes, LSAT scores and citations received by the Law Review”.
“The U.S. News methodology is substantially flawed, and we are no longer willing to spend the significant administrative time necessary to comply with requests for data irrelevant to the needs of prospective students.”
Campbell Law celebrated 45 years of graduating legal leaders and 12 years of being located in a state-of-the-art facility in the heart of North Carolina’s Capital City.
Former teacher Joshua Lockwood told The Eye Of Media.Com: ” it is always useful to scrutinise the methodologies used in setting standards of rankings by reputable institutions, to ensure there is no serious oversight.