NewHavenBIZ

20 n e w h a v e n B I Z | M a r c h 2 0 2 3 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m Grading Education F O C U S : C o l l e g e s & U n i v e r s i t i e s By Liese Klein I t's one thing to start a revolution, quite another to pick up the pieces and create a new system. at's what Yale Law School and other top institutions are encoun- tering as they cope with a revolt against higher-education rankings sparked right here in New Haven. Since Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken announced in November that the top-ranked school would pull out of the U.S. News & World Report ranking system, more than 40 other law schools have followed suit. In Connecticut, both Quinnip- iac and UConn law schools have announced they will no longer take part in rankings, taking all three of the state's law schools out of the system. Medical schools — including those at Harvard and Stanford — and a liberal arts college have also joined the movement, pushing back against U.S. News, a for-prof- it media company that bills itself as a trusted arbiter of education quality. (Yale's medical school had yet to announce its plans as of early March.) Now students, parents and edu- cation leaders are looking beyond U.S. News rankings to ask, what's next? How can prospective students find the best fit for their futures amid a sea of conflicting data? Revolution on Wall Street Yale Law School (YLS), located at 127 Wall St. in the heart of Yale's New Haven campus, seems an unlikely place for a revolution against the U.S. News ranking system. Aer all, YLS has held the No. 1 spot since the media company started its law-school rankings in 1990. at unprecedented run at the top has helped burnish the school's reputation and attract 4,202 applicants with top credentials to strive for the fewer than 200 spots in the class of 2025, the most recent to arrive in New Haven. For Gerken at YLS, the decision to pull out of the rankings was funda- mentally about equity and what she called "profoundly flawed" elements of the system that punished schools for admitting working-class students and supporting those seeking careers in public-interest law. Instead of supplying data to U.S. News, YLS would instead commit to providing data directly to prospective students, she said in an- nouncing the pullout on Nov. 16. "We have reached a point where the rankings process is undermining the core commitments of the legal profession," Gerken said. "As a result, we will no longer partic- ipate." Quinnipiac Law School Dean Jennifer Brown echoed Gerken's cri- tique in announcing the school's pullout on Jan. 19, stating that programs at the Hamden school to augment training of budding lawyers in prob- lem-solving and serving clients aren't acknowl- edged in higher rankings. "We are perennially dis- appointed with the failure of the U.S. News and World Report methodol- ogy to measure or reward these efforts to 'educate the whole lawyer,'" Brown said. "Your methodology rewards wealth, discourages racial and other forms of diversity, undermines student mental health, and ignores or obscures factors that should matter most to prospective students." Quinnipiac Law was ranked in the No. 147-192 tier in the 2023 edition of the U.S. News Best Law Schools listing. UConn Law School ranked No. 64 in a three-way tie with Penn State and the University of San Diego. "e decision not to participate derives from our long-held belief that the U.S. News rankings do not appro- priately measure or adequately capture UConn Law's strengths and values or the life-transformative educational ex- perience we offer our students," Dean Eboni S. Nelson said in announcing the school's decision on Jan. 30. Opting out YLS's decision to be the first law school to opt out of the U.S. News ranking is not surprising con- sidering both Yale's mission and standing, said Colin Diver, former dean of the University of Pennsyl- vania Law School and author of the 2022 book "Breaking Ranks: How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education and What to Do About It." "I think the real reason is that the top-tier law schools are getting increasingly ill at ease with the reputation they have as essentially feeders of the privi- leged," Diver said. "I do think that people like Heather Gerken truly care about serving a broader pur- pose and being able to go home Tough questions arise as Yale Law School sparks national rankings revolt Yale Law School has ranked at No. 1 since the U.S. News & World Report rankings of law schools began in 1990. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken and Harvard Law School Dean John Manning at a Boston meeting about the future of higher education rankings.

• Cover