US News: Brooklyn Law School Ranking Should Have Been Lower
By including only data concerning its full-time students in an “all students” category, Brooklyn Law School boosted its place this year on the controversial annual law school rankings list compiled by US News & World Report. The error also resulted in the law school’s being omitted entirely from a new US News list of law schools with part-time programs.
But despite these glitches “US News is not going to recalculate Brooklyn’s law school rank,” writes rankings guru Bob Morse today on his Morse Code blog on the magazine’s website.
Noting that this is the first year US News has asked law schools to combine information concerning full- and part-time students into one category, and indicating that the law school’s error was inadvertent, Morse says the situation has prompted the magazine to develop a new policy.
Starting next year, if law schools with part-time programs leave out some data concerning part-time students—as Brooklyn Law School admittedly did not only this year but previously—the magazine will insert the information based on what was reported to the ABA the previous year.
Morse also includes in his post part of a linked explanation from the law school: “This error was completely inadvertent,” the law school’s written statement says in part. “There was no intention to hide the existence of our part-time program, as evidenced by substantial other information we provided about our part-time program elsewhere in the questionnaire.”
The Brooklyn explanation also notes that the law school has openly debated with US News for years about “what we regard as flaws in its rankings methodology.”
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “US News ‘Investigating’ Brooklyn Law School’s Ranking”
