NBC News: Harvard and Yale Are Withdrawing from the U.S. News Law School Ranking System Claiming it Overvalues Traditional Metrics

EXCERPT:

ALLEN: "Yale is number one and Harvard is number three or four. And this, again, is law school rankings. Remember, there are rankings for engineering schools, undergraduate schools, business schools, and to some extent this is the gold standard. Families, students, pay a lot of attention to U.S. News and what they have to say ranking schools because it makes it — it so much simplifies things. But Yale and Harvard are making a statement of principle. They are saying that the whole process is fundamentally flawed because it essentially pays too much attention to what you might think of as traditional metrics when they are looking at law school students, students who have high GPAs, students who do well on the law — the LSATs, the entrance exams, students who basically do well in the law school and they get a good, high-paying job at the end with no debt. However, Yale is saying, and Harvard as well, that there obligation and their mission to the law profession and to their colleges and their universities is to find other kinds of students who are diverse, who perhaps need financial aid, students who perhaps don’t score as high in traditional metrics. They say that the U.S. News rankings don’t value that type of student. They also, Yale and Harvard, say they are trying to direct a lot of their students to public service, to public interest law, and they're saying that the U.S. News writings also don't value that. That's why they're opting out."