(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Several elite Ivy League institutions, including Harvard and Yale, pulled out of national university law school rankings on the grounds that the criteria does not emphasize the strength of diversity enough.
The elite institutions called the rankings “flawed,” complaining that they failed to recognize students who come from a “low-income background,” the Daily Caller reported.
It is suspected that the schools are dropping out ahead of the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action decision, according to John Sailer, fellow at the National Association of Scholars.
“If affirmative action falls, we can expect to see a lot of educational institutions drop objective standards from their admissions practices,” he said.
“This allows them to continue race-conscious admissions by other means… These top law schools probably have that in mind as they back out of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Ranking requires clear, objective standards, and if law schools hope to go test-optional, the ranking system presents an obvious problem.”
According to Mark Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, these so-called elite institutions are prizing diversity at the expense of any sort of competence at the required task–legal thinking and writing.
“There is now widespread speculation that if ‘affirmative discrimination’ and racial preferences are outlawed by the Supreme Court, law schools, medical schools, STEM programs and undergraduate programs at elite schools will overhaul their admissions criteria to maintain the racial diversity on their campuses that has become much more important than the academic credentials and abilities of their students,” Perry said, adding that ability is no longer an important standard.
“So given that student diversity is now more important than student merit and abilities, it would make sense that the top law schools are pulling out of the U.S. News & World Report rankings.”
