U.S. News Reacts to Criticism of Proposal to Include Part Time Students in Selectivity Data

I previously blogged the announcement of, and critical reaction to, the proposal by Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, that the magazine is "seriously studying" two changes to its law school rankings methodology that would affect 24.5% of the overall ranking:

• Counting both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for the median LSAT score (12.5% of ranking) and median undergraduate GPA (10%) ranking categories.
• Compute the bar passage rate (2%) (school's bar pass rate/jurisdiction's bar passage rate) using only the data of first-time takers who are graduates of ABA-accredited schools.

Mr. Morse today acknowledges the negative comments that the first proposal has engendered but asks whether, on balance, it is a helpful change:

Some people—including Brian Leiter— have argued that if U.S. News combines the scores for all entering students, regardless of the part-time or full-time status—it could reduce the options for certain types of students to go to law school. These critics say that some law schools would de-emphasize their part-time programs to maintain their position in the rankings. ... These people state that by including part-time student data in our student selectivity factors, U.S. News would be doing more harm that good: We would curb the gaming of admission data, but actual students could get hurt in the process.

Others have said that U.S. News needs to do something to account for the increase in law transfer students. Many believe this has become another way for law schools to game the system because schools don’t have to include transfer student data in what they report on the ABA. ...

Aren't law schools the sum of all their students (full-time, part-time, and transfer), and shouldn't the profile of the entire law school be the basis under which ranking comparisons are made? It should be noted that part-time student data are included in computing all the other variables (expenditures per students, student-faculty ratios, employment rates, and bar-pass rates) in the U.S. News law school rankings that involve statistical data.