Yale Law School pulls itself from ‘perverse’ university rankings over criteria for low-income students

Top law school’s move marks one of highest profile criticisms of ranking system

Yale University’s law school is withdrawing from the influential US News & World Report ranking process in one of the most high-profile criticisms yet in a growing movement challenging the magazine’s university ratings system.

The law school, consistently rated the best in the country, said in a statement on Wednesday that the criteria US News uses in its rankings disincentivise universities from accepting low-income students, providing financial aid, and encouraging pupils to pursue public interest law careers.

“We have reached a point where the rankings process is undermining the core commitments of the legal profession,” law school dean Heather K Gerken said on Wednesday, slamming the magazine system because “we have invested significant energy and capital in important initiatives that make our law school a better place but perversely work to lower our scores.”

US News & World Report told The Independent that Yale had mischaracterised its ranking system.

“We take our role seriously as the global leader in quality rankings that empower consumers, business leaders and policy officials to make better, more informed decisions about important issues affecting their lives and communities,” the magazine said in a statement.

“We are committed to our journalistic mission of ensuring that students can rely on the best and most accurate information in making decisions about their education.”

The dean argued that Yale’s commitment to fund student fellowships, and recent initiatives to give student aid entirely based on need, don’t count for much in the influential ranking system.

Rather, Dean Gerken wrote, the rankings overweight median LSAT scores and consider students on university-funded fellowships to be “effectively classified as unemployed.”

“That backward approach discourages law schools throughout the country from supporting students who dream of a service career,” she added.

Yale’s move was met with a mix of celebration and skepticism.

“Metrics reflect values and create incentives,” Yale law and sociology professor Monica Bell wrote in reaction to the announcement. “US News metrics chill investment in expanded access to legal education and public service.”

“Every school should follow Yale Law School’s example and drop out of the US News rankings,” Lara Schwartz of American University’s school of public affairs added on Twitter. “These nonsensical rankings harm higher ed as a whole. We should all stop playing.”

Others argued the school was leaving the ranking system out of self-interest, not public interest.

“Yale Law School will no longer participate in US News annual rankings because it doesn’t benefit Yale anymore to participate in the rankings,” Anderson Francois of Georgetown University’s law school said on Wednesday. “If it benefited Yale to participate in the rankings Yale would continue to do so no matter how flawed the methodology.”

The magazine’s university rankings have been criticised for years as incomplete or inaccurate, but they remain a deeply influential set of metrics for students and institutions alike.

“I haven’t met a parent who doesn’t think the rankings are important,” Terry Mady-Grove, whose company Charted University Consultants helps students get into elite schools, told The New York Timesin September. “It doesn’t matter who they are, what their educational backgrounds are, or where they live.”

Others, like Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, have suggested the rankings are a “joke” because they prioritise status and exclusivity over equity.

"In the relentless quest that post-secondary institutions are on — to go up in the rankings — it means the institutions can behave in ways that aren’t in service of the public good," Tim Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, told CBS News, decrying the “arms race” mentality the rankings create among universities.

"It doesn’t serve them or their students well."

The magazine has defended its process.

“We’re very focused on making sure that universities are doing what they say they would do,” Eric J Gertler, executive chairman and chief executive of US News, told The Washington Post last month. “Our mission is to make sure that students make the best decision for themselves.”