Above The Law “U.S. News Lashes Out At Law Schools That Don’t Want To Play Their Silly Little Rankings Game Anymore”

One of the biggest stories in legal academia over the last few months has been law schools dropping like flies from the U.S. News rankings. It began in November when Yale Law School announced they were pulling out of the rankings, and that quickly escalated to over 20 percent of law schools exiting along with Yale. U.S. News changed their methodology in an effort to soften critics, but the situation hasn’t gotten any better. In fact, it’s worse, with the boycott of U.S. News spreading to elite medical schools as well.

Now U.S. News is on the offensive against its critics. Eric Gertler, executive chairman and CEO of U.S. News & World Report, penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal accusing those schools exiting the rankings of gatekeeping the sort of information that perspective students need to make informed decisions:

Choosing the right school is one of the most important decisions students will ever make. Besides being a significant investment of time and money, it is a critical first step to ensuring a student’s future career opportunities, earning potential, and quality of life. But absent U.S. News’s academic rankings, it’s difficult to find accurate, comprehensive information that empowers students to compare institutions and identify the factors that matter most to them. We are one of the few places that do.

Our rankings don’t capture every nuance. Academic institutions aren’t monolithic or static; comparing them across a common data set can be challenging. But we reject our critics’ paternalistic view that students are somehow incapable of discerning for themselves from this information which school is the best fit.

Source: https://abovethelaw.com/2023/03/u-s-news-lashes-out-at-law-schools-that-dont-want-to-play-their-silly-little-rankings-game-anymore/