Muller: Academic Attrition And The U.S. News Law School Rankings

Derek Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar), USNWR Should Considering Incorporating Academic Attrition Rates to Offset Perverse Incentives in New Methodology:

Last year, 41 schools have 0 students who faced academic attrition. Another 70 schools had academic attrition at less than 1% of the law school’s overall total JD enrollment. ...

USNWR has now done a few things that make academic attrition much more attractive to law schools.

First, it has devalued admissions statistics. ...

Second, it has dramatically increased the value of outputs, including the bar exam and employment outcomes. Again, a sensible result. But if schools can improve their outputs by graduating fewer students ... the temptation to dismiss students grows. That is, if the most at-risk students are dismissed, the students who have the lowest likelihood of passing the bar exam and the most challenging time securing employment are out of the schools “outputs” cohort. ...

I would submit that USNWR should consider incorporating academic attrition data into its law school rankings. As it is, its college rankings consider six-year graduation rates and first-year retention rates. (Indeed, it also has a predicted graduation rate, which it could likewise construct here.) While transfers out usually reflect the best law students in attrition, and “other” attrition can likely be attributed to personal or other idiosyncratic circumstances, academic attrition reflects the school’s decision to dismiss some students rather than help them navigate the rest of the law program. Indeed, from a consumer information perspective, this is important information for a prospective law student—if I enter the program, what are the odds that I’ll continue in the program?

I think some academic attrition is necessary as a check on truly poor academic performance. But as the charts above indicate, there are wide variances in how schools with similarly-situated students use it. And I think a metric, even at a very low percentage of the overall USNWR rankings, would go a long way to deterring abuse of academic attrition in pursuit of higher rankings.