U.S. News delays law and med school rankings amid questions about data
U.S. News & World Report, already under scrutiny for the way it ranks some college programs, is delaying the release of its influential annual list of top law schools and medical schools as it answers “an unprecedented number of inquiries” from schools about the data.
The news outlet did not give a new publication date, but said the lists would not be released until work to address the questions has been completed.
“We take our role as a journalism enterprise very seriously and are working as quickly as possible to produce the best information available for students,” the company said in a statement.
Many leading law and medical schools revolted against the powerful rankings this fall and winter, refusing to participate in a system that some deans called arbitrary and counter to the missions of their schools. U.S. News announced it would rank schools whether or not they supplied information, and in January said it would revise its formula for analyzing law-school programs in response to the criticism. Now, some law schools are questioning whether the numbers used in the new rankings are right.
Harvard Law School, Berkeley School of Law and Georgetown Law asked U.S. News in recent days about what appeared to be errors or discrepancies in the data used in the rankings. Much of the concern appears to center on employment-related data, including how the rankings consider law students who continue their studies in other graduate programs.
U.S. News previously planned to announce its 2023-24 lists of top medical and law schools on Tuesday. (In recent years, the lists had been released in March.) Earlier this month, the publication shared embargoed data with schools, and announced shortlists of the top law and medical schools.
On Friday, U.S. News announced that the publication date for the graduate rankings would be pushed back to Tuesday, saying they were devoting additional time to comprehensively address inquiries on the lists. “More than 100 million students and their families visit USNews.com each year to access easily-digestible data, information and advice that they can rely on to help them make the most informed education decision. We remain committed to publishing the best information available for those students,” U.S. News said at the time.
On Wednesday, U.S. News announced that while other graduate rankings would be released Tuesday, the medical and law school lists “and supporting documents” would be released later.
Michelle Day, a spokeswoman for U.S. News, declined to comment on whether there were inaccuracies in the data, referring questions to the statement released Wednesday. The inquiries included requests from law and medical schools to update data submitted after the collection period, according to the publication, and they are working to address the questions quickly.
“The level of interest in our rankings, including from those schools that declined to participate in our survey, has been beyond anything we have experienced in the past,” they wrote.
U.S. News annually collects information from schools to use in its rankings. This year, after dozens of law schools declined to participate, it said it would rely on publicly available information from the American Bar Association. It announced other changes, including the way it measures employment outcomes, giving full weight to some long-term school-funded fellowships and to students enrolled in graduate studies after completing law school.
William Treanor, the dean of Georgetown University’s law school, which had joined the revolt, said Thursday the school had reached out to U.S. News twice last week with concerns about employment data that was used, but has not received a response.
Marva de Marothy, assistant dean for faculty affairs at Harvard Law School, wrote to Robert Morse, chief data strategist for U.S. News, on Wednesday to alert him to apparent discrepancies in the data.
The school’s dean, John F. Manning, announced in November that the school would no longer participate because of several long-standing concerns including that its methodology undermines the efforts of many law schools to support public-interest careers for graduates in part by giving less weight in its rankings to fellowships funded by the law schools.
“Unfortunately, the employment ranking continues to be an issue,” de Marothy wrote. “Namely, the employment data U.S. News published during the embargo period is inaccurate, incomplete, and does not match the data reported to and published by the ABA. Although we no longer participate in the U.S. News rankings, we expect the magazine to use accurate, publicly available numbers if it intends to continue to make representations about our law school.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, another school that declined to participate, wrote to U.S. News officials Monday asking them to review the employment data. He said by phone Thursday that a number of law schools have expressed concern that the employment data is inaccurate, “that they’re counting certain things for some schools, but not counting the same things for other schools.”
“I think that all of this goes to reinforcing the serious questions about the credibility of U.S. News and what they’re doing,” he said.