UC Irvine Law School has joined a growing number of universities opting out of participating in US News and World Report rankings amid claims such are “problematic” to legal education.
For decades, the magazine has served a large role in the university ranking industry, comparing over 190 law schools and other institutions across the country, and in turn, creating a hierarchy students and employers often refer to when deciding which schools to attend and from which to hire recent graduates.
Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Columbia, Stanford, and Georgetown law schools withdrew from its ranking system last month, despite consistently ranking in the magazine’s top 10 spots each year.
UCI Law joined them Nov. 23, stating the magazine’s ranking methods do more harm than good.
“As other [law schools] have described, the U.S. News law school rankings increasingly have a detrimental effect on legal education,” UCI Law Dean Austen Parrish said in a statement the same day. “The survey techniques are problematic, and the rankings are often misleading.”
According to Parrish, UCI’s decision is based on the “accuracy” and “fairness” of the magazine’s rankings process, particularly in terms of how it evaluates public service, such as when students seek to become public defenders.
Such, according to Parrish, does not align with the law school’s values or commitment to such work.
Yale Law Dean Heather K. Gerken said in November the magazine’s rankings disincentivize law schools from offering programs and stipends to students pursuing such careers by classifying them as unemployed.
“One of the most troubling aspects of the U.S. News rankings is that it discourages law schools from providing critical support for students seeking public interest careers and devalues graduates pursuing advanced degrees,” Gerken said.
Gerken also stated the rankings “discourages” law schools from admitting and awarding scholarships to low-income students, stating the magazine instead incentivizes schools to admit students with higher GPAs and LSAT scores, and overlooks those with greater financial need.
“This heavily weighted metric imposes tremendous pressure on schools to overlook promising students, especially those who cannot afford expensive test preparation courses,” Gerken said. “As a result, millions of dollars of scholarship money now go to students with the highest scores, not the greatest need.”
UCI Law’s Parrish echoed similar sentiments.
“[UCI Law] is defined by advancing the upward mobility of first-generation students and those underrepresented in the legal profession,” he said.
Representatives at UCI School of Law did not respond to a request for comment.
