St. Thomas Questions U.S. News' Decision to Remove its Ranking Due to Placement Data Error

Following up on my prior post, University of St. Thomas Reported Inflated Placement Data to U.S. News:  outgoing Dean Tom Mengler has submitted this open letter to Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, questioning the decision to move St. Thomas from its original #119 overall ranking to the list of unranked schools:

I should now be a strong believer in the adage no good deed goes unpunished. We learned last friday through your blog post that your publication placed unIversity of St. Thomas School of Law in the "unranked" category after it immediately self-reported that two submitted data points related to "at graduation employment" were conflicting -- one accurate, one inaccurate. We have some questions about your decision to automatically "unrank" a school. I write to you today to do two things: first, to make two inquiries about your decision, and second, to express my concerns about the impact of your decision on schools' incentives to correct errors promptly.

Update:

• ABA Journal
• National Law Journal