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Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Sometimes No (US) News is Good News - Part 10 (Promised Change)

The New York Times is reporting that US News and World Report has now agreed to make changes in its rankings of law schools, after a series of major law schools, including Berkeley, said they would no longer cooperate with the magazine. Our prior report on this topic indicated that it was rumored that changes would be made.* Now it's a fact.

...In a letter to American law school deans published on its site, U.S. News said its next list would give more credit to schools whose graduates go on to pursue advanced degrees, or school-funded fellowships to work in public-service jobs that pay lower wages. The magazine, which has been publishing the ratings for decades, is responding to criticism that its rankings overvalue high-paying private-sector jobs.

The 2023-24 rankings, scheduled to be published this spring, will also rely less on surveys of schools’ reputations submitted by academics, lawyers and judges, the magazine said. A spokeswoman for U.S. News said the list will no longer consider indicators of student debt, or the schools’ spending per student. Critics have said the magazine’s previous metric for measuring student debt encouraged schools to favor wealthy students over those with financial need, and that its use of spending per student figures favors wealthier institutions.

“We realize that legal education is neither monolithic nor static and that the rankings, by becoming so widely accepted, may not capture the individual nuances of each school,” Robert Morse, the chief data strategist at U.S. News, and Stephanie Salmon, senior vice president of data and information strategy, wrote in the letter.

U.S. News will continue to rank schools that have declined to participate, using publicly available data...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/us/after-boycott-from-law-schools-us-news-world-report-changes-ranking-system.html.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/12/sometimes-no-us-news-is-good-news-part_9.html.

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To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia904700.us.archive.org/34/items/new-year-outlook/us%20news%20change.mp3

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