Yale and Harvard Law Pull Out of US News Rankings

SARA SIDNER, HOST: And next, Yale and Harvard Law Schools have withdrawn their participation from the key university ranking system by the U.S News and World Report, saying that it undermines the commitments of the legal profession. Now, despite taking the top spot every year, Yale was the first to announce this change. Heather Gerken is the dean of Yale Law School and joins Michel Martin to discuss their decision.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Sara. Dean Gerken, thank you so much for joining us.

HEATHER GERKEN, DEAN, YALE LAW SCHOOL: Thank you for having, me. Michel.

MARTIN: So, as dean of Yale’s law school, you just announced that the school will pulling out from the U.S. News and World Report rankings. You are followed by Harvard Law School and Berkeley Law. And we understand that the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and Northwestern Law Schools say that they are also considering this move as well. And you announced this in an open letter where you explained your reasoning. You say that these rankings, which are for — from a — for profit entity, it has to be said, you said that they are profoundly flawed and they discourage law schools from doing what is best for legal education. And I want to mention that you wrote an open letter about this and people can read in its entirety. As briefly as you can though, tell us why you say that.

GERKEN: Sure. The trouble with the U.S News rankings is that over the last number of years they’ve started to create a set of metrics that are fundamentally against the basic commitments of this profession. And I will just focus on two of them. One, service is a touchstone of this profession and yet, U.S. News systematically undermines the ability of law schools to support students who want to do public interest work. Let me just give you one tiny example. We create these amazing fellowships for students. We have more than anybody else does at any law school. And so, those fellowships let our students work for one year, on our dime, at a public interest organization. They are just amazing. So, guess what happens to those students? They are counted as if they were functionally unemployed. So, just imagine that for a second. If you are a law school at any other place and you are thinking about, do you want to create one of a program like this, there’s no way you are going to do it because it’s going to make you look like a low employment school. So, it just sends a false signal out to students. The other thing that is really damaging about the rankings is what they do for low-income students. So, this is a moment when equity is at the center of conversations about universities. And yet, U.S. News undermines the incentives of law schools to do many things that support low-income students, even admitting low-income students becomes a risk under the rankings.

MARTIN: Tell me, in what way do the rankings undermine? Is it that they discourage lower income students from applying or tell me how you think it works in that way?

GERKEN: Yes. There are a couple of examples I can give you. So, the U.S. News quite brightly recognizes that debt load really matters for students with low-income. So, they are absolutely right about that. And it is admirable that they’ve tried to helped by measuring it. Unfortunately, the metrics they use are so crude that they end up sending students the wrong signal. So, let me give you couple examples. So, first, loan forgiveness programs are one of the best things the law schools do. They both support public interest and they really help low-income students. So, for example, we have a loan forgiveness program. If a student works at an organization that doesn’t pay lot of money, we’ll just forgive their loans, zero them out over 10 years. But in calculating debt load, that’s not included in the debt load calculation. Just give you another example. If you have a choice in your law school that’s worried about your rankings, and you are choosing between a low- income student and somebody who isn’t, you’d think, well, if I bring that low-income student in, they are going to have higher needs, higher that needs. And so, it is a risk if I bring that student in because it is going to increase my debt load ranking. Now, you could solve that problem by just talking about how much financial aid do you give to students, but that receives much less weight in the ranking. And then, the last piece of it, I’ll just say, is that U.S. News really emphasizes LSATs and GPAs. And LSATs and GPAs are obviously important in evaluating a candidate, but they are not the full measure of a person and, again, particularly for a low-income student who cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars on courses and prep. And so, when you have a student that you know has enormous promise, you want to admit that student and you want to support them. What happens instead with the ranking that U.S. News has created is that, one, people are nervous about taking those students because it might lower their LSAT score. But, two, and far more importantly, and this one is just a killer, all the — many, many of our peers are using financial aid to bring students with high scores to campus. They are called merit scholarships. And the reason deans are doing them is to keep their rankings up. So, what does that mean? Millions and millions of dollars, millions of millions of dollars are going into the hands of students who may be able to pull — pay full freight. They may plenty of money to pay tuition but they are getting tuition discounts and merit scholarships. Meanwhile, that is pulling money away from financial aid for the students who need it the most. Now, we have done just the opposite. We have never given out scholarship based on scores. We are entirely needs based. And more importantly, we were the first law school in the country, just last year, to create full tuition scholarships for the many students at our school who come from families below the poverty line. That is something that law schools should feel free to do but the U.S. News rankings make it much harder to do it.

MARTIN: Well, one of the reasons that your decision in this stand out or the decisions like Yale Law School to stand out is that Yale has been ranked number one for, what, the entirety of the time that these rankings have been taking place. So, your decision to do all of these things hasn’t damaged or rankings. So, it might — some might argue then, that what is the beef, because it is not discouraging Yale from doing these things.

GERKEN: This is not about Yale Law School. This is about legal education and the legal profession. I mean, just sit back for a second and imagine what we are doing. If you said to every law school dean in the country, we want you to give data solely, not data for everybody, data solely to a four-profit commercial entity so that they can rank based on that formula, no one would join that ranking. It just does not make any sense. And so, what — we decided, you know, to take a step back. This is my second term as dean. I want Yale Law School to drive the conversation about the future of legal education. We’ve never set our sights by the ranking. We’ve never advertised our ranking. We’ve never allowed it to form our policy. But we are part of a system that is undermining the core values of legal education. We just don’t want to be part of that system anymore.

MARTIN: People have complained about these rankings for years and they have talked about how biased they are, how they advantage certain people over others, how they are not really relevant to the purpose of higher education. So, I am just curious, like, why now

GERKEN: Yes. No, it’s a really good question. I mean, I believe in data. I believe in transparency. I wrote a book on rankings. So, I’m not afraid of the way that rankings work when they are done well. You know, a ranking is only as good as the methodology on which it relies. I also understand that students, particularly, again, low-income students, first gen-ers (ph), they need some means of trying to sort of measure the differences among law schools. So, the — but over the last five years, U.S. News has added one metric after another that has just further undermined the goals of the legal profession. So, that debt metric is a new one. And I should also just say, I really believe in trying to give people a chance to change and working inside of the institution. So, for the last few years, the deans have been working really hard to get U.S. News to change its metrics. When I first became dean, I worked with a bunch of other deans to write a letter just on that question, of those public interest fellowships. Nothing has changed. So, we gave them a chance to do better and to do right by the legal profession, and they did not. And so, if felt like now is a time to take a step back and reflect and think about what we are doing.

MARTIN: You know, it’s interesting because U.S. News, what they’ve said in response is the following, I’ll just read. It says, “U.S. News and World Reports will continue to rank all fully accredited law schools, regardless of whether schools agree to submit their data. They say, they respect each school decision, and that the rankings are designed for students seeking to make the best decisions for the legal education. We will continue to pursue our journalistic mission of ensuring that students can rely on the best and most accurate information using the rankings as one factor in their law school search. How do you read that? What do you think they’re saying here?

GERKEN: Yes. I mean, U.S. News is welcome to do whatever it wants. It will be doing it with about — missing about half the data that is has ranked before. So, it’s completely its decision, but it is not the best and most accurate data, and they have package this as what the best law schools are. The trouble is that they are trying to talk to too many constituencies, thinking about too many things and measuring things that can’t be measured in the way that they measure them. So, I want to be completely transparent about data. I want to provide information our students need, but they are not doing it right now. They are sending a false signal to students who care about public interest work. They are sending a false signal to low-income students. So, we are going to provide data for those students, but we’re going to provide it in a form that is accurate and that truly captures the kinds of concerns these students have.

MARTIN: Like what are they? What are you going to do instead? You know, Yale doesn’t need to advertise itself nor does Harvard, nor does Stanford. What will you do instead?

GERKEN: So, I will just tell you. I — right now, privately for just Yale, we are going to create Yale by the number. A set of information for students. And so, it’s going to say, are you interested in public interest? What kinds of information do you need to know? And we’re going to just — we’re going to disclose all of our data on that front. But I’d also — I’m also, right now, in conversations with experts in higher education. I am really hoping that Yale Law School will lead on this front too. And help figuring out how to provide the best, most useful data to students across the country no matter what they are seeking. From a law school, we want students to come here not because we are number one, not because of our reputation, we want them to come here because it’s the right place for them.

MARTIN: This is what I’m kind of confused about. Who is this designed to serve? I mean, it seems, in a way, that what this really does is generate a lot of applications from the students all over the world who are never going to get into these schools so that your yield can be, you know, super low and that becomes its own kind of metric of success. And I’m just trying to figure out who this serves?

GERKEN: Well, Michel, I actually think it’s worse than that. I actually think the real problem is, is that they are preventing law schools for doing right by their first gen-ers (ph), from doing right by their low- income students, from doing right by student who want to go back and serve their communities. They are undermining the incentives for the law schools to help exactly those students. And let me just give you the really crucial example it is these scholarships that are designed to pull in high scoring students rather than put money in the hands of the students who need it most. You know, law school deans have every reason, if they want to create those scholarships on their own, they are, of course, welcome to do it and they should. But they are not all doing it for that reason, they are doing it because they feel the pressure of U.S. News rankings. They are afraid to slip. And so, they are taking millions of dollars and putting it in the hands of students who may have the capacity to pay. Whereas the students who really needs that money, the students who come from low-income backgrounds, that is 10 percent, roughly, of our class. 10 percent of our students come from below the poverty line, that is where our financial aid is going.

MARTIN: But how do you know that that is where that scholarship money is going? I think there are those who would argue that that’s — those are diamonds in the rough, as it were, that these students, they might be high scoring but low-income and those are the diamonds in the rough and that that’s where the financial aid should go. I mean, how do you know that it’s actually going to students who could afford to pay but just aren’t, or they’ve just — they have invested in these, as you pointed out, expensive test prep programs, which have now become a standard practice for people of means? But how do you know that that’s what’s — that the reality?

GERKEN: Because it’s not awarded based on financial aid and financial need. That is the core of it. And the diamonds in the rough are at Yale Law School. These students are the most entrepreneurial students on the planet. I mean, just imagine, they got to Yale despite all the obstacles put in their way. And yet — and, you know, $26,000 for a family of four, that’s the poverty line. And those students have nonetheless made it to Yale Law School. We want to lift the burden of the cost of going to law school from their shoulders. And, you know, I — this comes — this is personal for me. So, I’ll just tell you, Michel, when I was — these many years ago when I was a law student, my parents weren’t paying for my legal education and I was given one of those merit scholarships. I turned down Yale Law School in order to go to Michigan Law School. It was a great education. It meant an enormous amount to me to be able to be tuition-free. But, you know, now, that I’m dean and I’m seeing where our students are coming from, especially those students from below the poverty line, the thing that haunts me is that I am sure I was not the neediest kid in that class. I was not the neediest kid in the class, and that’s where, as dean of Yale Law School, I want that financial aid need to go.

MARTIN: There are those — OK. Here’s the other side of this, of course, is that Yale, Harvard, Stanford or Northwestern Michigan, you know, these rankings aren’t relevant. You are so well known around the world that people are going to apply no matter what. I think the argument seems to be with those schools that aren’t as well known, that these rankings are a way for them to advertise themselves, their way to persuade students to give them a look who might not otherwise do so. Is there any merit to that argument?

GERKEN: You know, that’s actually why I believe in data transparency and better rankings. I don’t want to downplay the importance of providing information, but I just want to say, this is not a good one. And, you know, one of the things that the Department of Education has been really leading on in recent years has been thinking about how do you provide data in a way that really helps the students who need it the most? And we want to follow that lead. It’s time for legal education to do the same.

MARTIN: And I recognize that you just said and you’ve said several times, this is not about Yale Law School, it’s about legal education more broadly. But what about higher education? I mean, by implication, are you suggesting that the colleges and universities, overall, should consider this step?

GERKEN: You know, so, I’ve not enough in — you know, when you are a dean, you are in the weeds before you make a decision like this. You really think it through. I’m not enough in the weeds to know how well all these other rankings work. But I just — I will say, when I think about the mission of legal education, our students are inheriting an impossible set of problems to solve. And our job is to teach them to solve them, because they are all going to lead, they are all going to do important work in the world. And so, in order to do that, there’s two things you’ve got to do. One, is you’ve got to think about how to train them for their jobs, and we are working on that inside the school cool as well. But the others, you have to have everyone at the table to solve those problems. And to me, stepping away from the rankings is part of our efforts to make sure that we have everyone at the table for the conversation and that we’re launching them to make sure that they’re at the table of the conversation going forward.

MARTIN: Where does the whole question of legacy fits into this? Because this is — you know, as we know, part of this conversation around affirmative action, you know, the book in conversation is around legacy, right? That people whose parents attended these institutions, their offspring tend to have a leg up. But we also know that the alumni of these institutions tend to be, you know, consistent supporters of the school, financially. And that is partly why this sort of cycle perpetuates itself. You are obviously saying that there is a whole range of activities like, you know, public interest law, there’s a whole range of professions that we need people to go into that aren’t going to necessarily be remunerative but are going to do a lot for the society. And I am just interested in how you are thinking about those two things in tandem, right?

GERKEN: Sure. I have a very simple answer to that one, Michel, and it is completely consistent with our values. We have no legacy preference. Zero. There is none. And in fact, you know, one of the things that we’ve done during my deanship is we’ve really focused on students who come with families who haven’t gone to college, who come from family members who haven’t gone to graduate and professional school. That number has increased by 100 percent for one group and 80 percent for another. There’s a reason for that. We have really focused in our admission process, not on how far students have gone but how far they have come. And so, that’s why we have this absolutely radical change in the makeup of our student body. When I started, we are roughly 32 percent students of color. Steady state for 10 years, it’s 54 percent. This year, we’ve — in the six — most of our classes in our history have been under my deanship, and we’ve dramatically increased the number of students from below the poverty line and the first gen-ers (ph), the first (INAUDIBLE) college. We are looking to what we understand at the law school to be merits, and that is a measure for how far you’ve come.

MARTIN: How will you know whether you are — this move has succeeded in what you hoped that it would? When — you know, what metric should we use to evaluate whether you and the other deans have accomplished what you hoped to here?

GERKEN: You know, for me, the metric would be if five years from now, law school deans feel like they are free to do right by the values of the profession and right by their students, we will have succeeded. That’s what I hope to do.

MARTIN: Dean Gerken, thanks so much for talking us today.

GERKEN: Thank you for having me, Michel. It’s been a pleasure.