Harvard, Yale, And US News: Who’s Flunking Whom?

Harvard and Yale Law School announced their withdrawal from US News’s law-school-ranking process, citing its “profoundly flawed” methodology. “Profoundly flawed” because Harvard and Yale might no longer come out on top?

Sore Winners

For the past 32 years, Yale Law School has ranked #1 in US News’s rankings. Harvard has scored the #2 or #3 slot for all but two years of this period.

For over three decades, then, Yale and Harvard apparently lived quite happily with this “profoundly flawed” methodology.

What has changed are these schools’ priorities, which US News’s methodology doesn’t favor.

What, if anything, should be done about it?

US News’s Methodology

This column has previously critiqued US News’s methdology for business schools and found it wanting.

But, Harvard’s and Yale’s message (since echoed by Berkley, Columbia, and Georgetown) seems to be: “If we won’t keep winning, we won’t play. And it’s US News’s fault.”

The US News current law-school-rankings methodology allocates points across four weighted categories:

Peer Quality Assessment (40%)

40% of US News rankings stem from surveys of law-school faculty (25%), and judges and practitioners (15%).

With a 69% participation rate, the surveys represent a popularity contest, since no robust effort seems made to test participants’ knowledge or bias, or to normalize their scores.

Interestingly enough, Harvard’s and Yale’s denunciations of the methodology don’t relate to these surveys.

Student Selectivity (21%)

Selectivity assessments drive 21% of rankings. These assessments comprise median incoming-student board scores (LSAT, GRE), which count for 11.25%. Median incoming-student undergraduate GPAs count for 8.75%. And the law school’s acceptance rate counts for 1%.

The Deans of both Harvard and Yale reportedly claim that this emphasis on board scores and grades punishes their schools’ efforts to “enhance socioeconomic diversity and support students from lower-income households...[while] encourag[ing] institutions to disregard promising students with low test scores.”

Yale’s dean also complains that the weight given student scores and grades undercuts need-based aid.

Of course, such weight also creates competition (in the form of scholarships) for students with demonstrated academic success. But for such “merit aid,” as Harvard Law’s dean calls it, these promising-but well-off students might have gone to Harvard or Yale.

Oh, the nerve.

Faculty and Instructional/Library Resources (13%)

Faculty, law school and library resources comprise four indicators: average spending on instruction, library (including resources) and supporting services (10%) and the average spending on all other items, including financial aid (1%). The student-faculty ratio counts for 2%.

Harvard and Yale criticism in this area relates to their loan-forgiveness programs for public-interest work. US News does not count these programs as financial aid. US News has a point, since the forgiveness requires work outside of school.

Student Placement Success (26%)

Placement success is composed of five indicators. The most heavily rated relates to employment rates at graduation (4%) and 10 months thereafter (14%).

Bar-exam-passage rates account for 3%.

Finally, this category considers the average debt incurred in obtaining a J.D. at graduation (3%), as well as the percent of law school graduates incurring J.D. law school debt (2%).

Harvard and Yale take issue with this category. In calculating student debt loads, the category fails to reflect school-funded loan forgiveness programs for public-interest work. As a result, the schools claim, the methodology disincentivizes institutions from supporting students who want to pursue (presumably lower-paying) public-interest careers.

Moreover, the methodology treats as unemployed students who pursue advanced degrees after graduation, as well as students who receive public-interest fellowships funded by the law school.

A Great Law School: Inputs, Outputs, and Throughputs

What makes a law school great?

A Thought Experiment — Inputs and Outputs

Imagine that talented and motivated students receive expert and rigorous instruction from leaders in their respective fields. Graduates move to the next phase of their lives with superb skills in legal reasoning, research, and writing, as well as a solid grounding in basic areas of law (e.g., contracts, evidence, constitutional law).

This thought experiment focuses on inputs (quality of incoming students), process (expert and rigorous instruction) and outputs (highly capable graduates). To some degree, the US News methodology tries to reflect them.

This thought experiment leaves out a major consideration for students, though. Will they find the education (and its cost) worthwhile? US News tries to capture this point by looking at debt loads and employment rates.

Harvard’s and Yale’s Focus on Throughputs

What both the thought experiment and US News’s methodology leave out, however, are throughputs. And throughputs represent the crux of Harvard’s and Yale’s criticism, as well as the reasons for their noisy withdrawal from the rankings.

Both the Harvard and Yale Law deans want to increase the volume of certain kinds of students (“socioeconomically diverse”) entering the school and graduating to pursue certain kinds of jobs (“public-interest careers”).

Such throughput goals may be worthy at a societal level. But in what way do they make a law school great? To the extent socioeconomic diversity improves the learning experience, does Harvard or Yale really lack the funds to give out scholarships? Why are student-loan-forgiveness programs tied to post-graduation public-interest work? Are these programs any less coercive to low-income (read, “socioeconomically diverse”) students than merit-based aid?

Finally, what is so special about public-interest work? In describing US News as “for profit” and “commercial,” the Dean of Yale Law School means to denigrate the publication. But, the Dean’s own chair was endowed by a for-profit, commercial real-estate developer.

As Tom Hanks’s character in the movie, Sully, says “Can we get serious now?”

Viva La Difference

Perhaps the biggest flaw in US News methodology is that it collapses too much into a single ranking: (1) how capable the law school’s graduates are (employer axis); (2) what return on their law-school investment the graduates can expect (graduate axis); and (3) what good the law school does for society as a whole (public-interest axis).

US News may find a way to rank Harvard and Yale without their involvement. The methodology can be adjusted to rely on publicly available information.

But, US News will be better for having Harvard, Yale, and other top law schools take part in the rankings. As Lyndon Johnson once said of a political opponent, “Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.”

The answer may lie in creating separate methodologies that rank each school along each of the above three axes.

It will also be interesting to see how much a school’s push along one axis effects its position on the other two.

#therightwaytowin