The Empire (aka US News & World Report) Strikes Back

We have been reporting on how various law schools (including at UC) have moved to non-participation in the US News & World Report rankings. The movement of non-participation has spread to some med schools and now to some undergraduate colleges. From the NY Times:

U.S. News & World Report said little last fall as Yale, Harvard and other elite law schools announced that they would no longer submit data to the publication’s rankings, charging that the influential list was an engine of inequality. But in the last few days, U.S. News has fired back. In a public-relations campaign, the publication has accused the schools of trying to avoid accountability on admissions and outcomes for students, and it connected the boycott to a looming Supreme Court decision that could end affirmative action.

“Some law deans are already exploring ways to sidestep any restrictive ruling by reducing their emphasis on test scores and grades — criteria used in our rankings,” Eric J. Gertler, the executive chairman and chief executive of U.S. News, wrote in an opinion essay on Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

The conflict is a sign that U.S. News will not shy away from vigorously defending the rankings, which are criticized by many universities but are popular with families — making them potentially another flash point in the country’s divisive debate over education issues...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/03/us/us-news-rankings-law-schools.html.