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Monday, April 11, 2005

Ind. Law - Still more on "IU-Indianapolis Law reportedly tumbles in U.S.News rankings"

"Rankings slide is a trial for law school: Students worried it could affect job hunting" is the headline to a front-page story today by Barb Berggoetz in the Indianapolis Star. Some quotes:

[T]he latest ranking of the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis -- the state's largest of four law schools -- has plummeted from 63rd to a tie for 95th in the U.S. News & World Report graduate school listings. * * *

But law school officials are forming a task force to analyze the reasons for the rankings slide and to make sure they're doing everything possible to accurately report the data for the ranking. They've scheduled a forum to answer questions April 25, responding to the Student Bar Association's request for an explanation.

According to this quote from the Star report, the school's ranking for the past several years may have been higher than warranted:
A mistake by the university has added to the tumble. The news magazine considers "faculty resources per student," a category that includes money spent on salaries, library materials and student career and other services, based on a three-year average. But three years ago, the law school inadvertently underreported student enrollment. That made the per-student resources seem more lavish than they were, which in turn boosted the school's ranking. The mistake has been fixed this year.
Check here for earlier ILB entries on this topic.

By the way, the side-bar to the Star story today may be misleading. It lists IU-Indianapolis as "tied for 95th" and "Marquette University, Mercer University (Georgia), and University of Kansas" as "tied for last." These three schools are actually tied for 100th, of the "100 top law schools" in the US News survey. Here is the actual U.S. News Top 100 Law Schools list. But there are a lot more law schools than 100.

U.S. News also sets out a Tier 3 and a Tier 4 list. Each of these tiers contain what looks like 40 or more schools. The schools on these two lists are not otherwise ranked, but are listed alphabetically. Included on the Tier 3 list, for example, are law schools like DePaul University, Michigan State University, and Albany Law School-Union University. Included on the Tier 4 list, for example, are Valparaiso University, Texas Wesleyan University, Drake University.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 11, 2005 05:59 AM
Posted to Indiana Law