By Aaron Miller-
Harvard Law School has announced its decision to stop participating in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings, the reputable school announced Wednesday.
The school’s announcement on Wednesday came just hours after Yale Law School also said it would stop participating in the rankings, which have come under increased scrutiny in recent months amid questions about the methodology U.S. News uses.
Since 1983, U.S. News has been providing education rankings and helping parents and students find the perfect school. The rankings include best global universities and best online colleges. It also includes the best high schools in the U.S.
However, Harvard University, which is ranked one of the best higher education institutions in the Uk has attacked the credibility of the rankings.
Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning (pictured) wrote in an email to HLS affiliates that it has “become impossible to reconcile our principles and commitments with the methodology and incentives the U.S. News rankings reflect.”
“Done well, such rankings could convey accurate, relevant information about universities, colleges, and graduate and professional schools that may help students and families make informed choices about which schools best meet their needs,” Manning wrote. “However, rankings can also emphasize characteristics that potentially mislead those who rely on them and can create perverse incentives that influence schools’ decisions in ways that undercut student choice and harm the interests of potential students.”
Harvard fell to No. 4 in the most recent U.S. News rankings, behind Yale, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.
Manning criticized a metric added by U.S. News two years ago that measures student debt at graduation. He argued that potential applicants are unable to distinguish whether this metric reflects a school’s generous financial aid or a high percentage of wealthy admits who do not require student loans.
“And to the extent the debt metric creates an incentive for schools to admit better resourced students who don’t need to borrow, it risks harming those it is trying to help,” Manning wrote.
Because the debt metric does not consider loan forgiveness programs, Manning wrote, it also conveys misleading information to students interested in public service, who would qualify for post-graduate aid.
He added that the rankings’ emphasis on test scores and college grades has incentivized law schools to prioritize academic performance over need when distributing financial aid. The Law School does not offer merit scholarships, unlike several of its peer institutions, including Columbia and the University of Chicago.
“Though HLS and YLS have each resisted the pull toward so-called merit aid, it has become increasingly prevalent, absorbing scarce resources that could be allocated more directly on the basis of need,” he wrote.
Manning’s scathing criticism is weighty and will not go unnoticed. He is an eminent public-law scholar with expertise in statutory interpretation and structural constitutional law and has published over 40 law journals.
A graduate of Harvard College and Law School, the distinguished legal expert and mentor has had two stints in the U.S. Department of Justice as an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel and the Office of the Solicitor General.
A representative of Havard University told The Eye Of Media.Com: ”Decisions like these are not taken lightly. The US News and World Rankings can be very useful in guiding students to their ideal university, but rankings that can be misleading in any way have flaws that need urgent redressal. A top reputable university like Havard would not want to be part of that in its current state”.
The decision to withdraw from the rankings will put pressure on the US News and World rankings to conduct a meticulous review of its system, in the best interests of its own high reputation, which could drop significantly without a second look.
Profoundly Flawed
He determined the criteria were “profoundly flawed,” Dean Heather Gerken said Wednesday. The school will no longer participate in listings that “disincentivize programs that support public interest careers, champion need-based aid, and welcome working-class students into the profession,” she said.
The rankings devalue programs that encourage low-paying public interest jobs and reward schools that give scholarships for high LSAT scores rather than focusing on a student’s financial needs, Gerken said.
While Yale awards many more public interest fellowships per student than any of its peers, she said, US News “appears to discount these invaluable opportunities to such an extent that these graduates are effectively classified as unemployed.”
That “backward approach discourages law schools throughout the country from supporting students who dream of a service career,” Gerken said in a post on the school’s website. The rankings also discourage graduates from pursuing advanced degrees, she said.
US News & World Report LP said Yale’s decision won’t change its goals for the rankings, which are a prestigious measure for the nation’s best law schools.
“The US News Best Law Schools rankings are for students seeking the best decision for their law education,” said Eric Gertler, executive chairman and chief executive officer.
‘we will continue to fulfill our journalistic mission of ensuring that students can rely on the best and most accurate information in making that decision,” Gertler said in a statement. “As part of our mission, we must continue to ensure that law schools are held accountable for the education they will provide to these students and that mission does not change with this recent announcement.”
Harvard joined Yale in announcing it will withdraw from the rankings.
“It has become impossible to reconcile our principles and commitments with the methodology and incentives the US News rankings reflect,” Dean John F. Manning said in a statement on the Harvard Law School website. “This decision was not made lightly and only after considerable deliberation over the past several months.”
The “debt metric” adopted by US News two years ago “risks confusing more than it informs because a school may lower debt at graduation through generous financial aid, but it may also achieve the same effect by admitting more students who have the resources to avoid borrowing,” Manning said. The school also said the methodology focuses too much on students test scores and college grades and undermines Harvard’s effort support public interest careers for their graduates.
Careful Thought
At Stanford law school, currently ranked No. 2, “we have long been concerned about the US News law school rankings methodology,” spokeswoman Stephanie Ashe said. The school will be giving “careful thought” to Yale’s objections, ” she added.
The row has led to analysts to closely examine how much credibility should be given to influential bodies that publish annual rankings in order to thoroughly examine the framework they use and test how well it does for competence.
The Shanghai Ranking, for example, which is the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) assesses six performance indicators, all relating to research excellence.
The Teaching metric is measured by five performance indicators: a reputation survey, the ratio of staff to students, the ratio of doctorate students to undergraduate students, the number of doctorates awarded per academic staff, and institutional income.
The Times Higher Education system of university rankings assesses university performance on the global stage and to provide a resource for readers to understand the different missions and successes of higher education institutions.
The rankings cover the three main missions university activity: research, teaching and impact.
Each university in the rankings has a detailed profile, with a breakdown of its overall scores across the rankings and supplementary data designed to help students. Available data on the staff-to-student ratio at each university includes the total income per student, the proportion of international students and the gender breakdown of students.