Judge Ho Boycotts Yale. Yale Boycotts U.S. News Rankings.

Boycotts can be used to fight bias against conservatives and progressives.

Yale Law School is withdrawing from the rankings compiled by the U.S. News World Report. The rationale? The rankings are biased against the progressive institution!

"The U.S. News rankings are profoundly flawed," Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken said. "Its approach not only fails to advance the legal profession, but stands squarely in the way of progress."

Specifically, she said, the rankings devalue programs that encourage low-paying public-interest jobs and reward schools that dangle scholarships for high LSAT scores, rather than for financial need.

I would add one other possible rationale. This decision was made in the shadow of Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. The Supreme Court will very soon make it difficult for elite private universities to use racial preferences for admission. Post-SFFA, the law school could no longer justify wide gaps between admission rates for applicants of different races. They can no longer rely on "personal" scores and other subterfuges. As a result, if Yale wants to keep its racial diversity numbers high, the overall LSAT and GPA scores would have to drop. And that decrease would affect the law school's rankings.

Justice Thomas aptly described the dilemma facing Yale in Grutter.

One must also consider the Law School's refusal to entertain changes to its current admissions system that might produce the same educational benefits. The Law School adamantly disclaims any race-neutral alternative that would reduce "academic selectivity," which would in turn "require the Law School to become a very different institution, and to sacrifice a core part of its educational mission." Brief for Respondent Bollinger et al. 33–36. In other words, the Law School seeks to improve marginally the education it offers *356 without sacrificing too much of its exclusivity and elite status. [FN4]

[FN 4]: The Law School believes both that the educational benefits of a racially engineered student body are large and that adjusting its overall admissions standards to achieve the same racial mix would require it to sacrifice its elite status. If the Law School is correct that the educational benefits of "diversity" are so great, then achieving them by altering admissions standards should not compromise its elite status. The Law School's reluctance to do this suggests that the educational benefits it alleges are not significant or do not exist at all.

The proffered interest that the majority vindicates today, then, is not simply "diversity." Instead the Court upholds the use of racial discrimination as a tool to advance the Law School's interest in offering a marginally superior education while maintaining an elite institution. Unless each constituent part of this state interest is of pressing public necessity, the Law School's use of race is unconstitutional.

Yale can can maintain its racial diversity by sacrificing its elite status. But these elite universities do not want to sacrifice their elite status. Cam Norris made this point during arguments in SFFA:

Cameron T. Norris: I mean, I think that's our point, that -- that SAT scores would go from the 99th percentile to the 98th percentile. That's not sacrificing academic excellence. That's moving Harvard from Harvard to Dartmouth. Dartmouth is still a great school. They get 98th percentile SAT scores. We've got to make some sacrifices.

Sonia Sotomayor: I -- I -- I don't -- I -- I actually --

Elena Kagan: There are those who love it.

Sonia Sotomayor: Yeah. (Laughter.)

Harvard could become Dartmouth. Yale could become Virginia. And so on. Or Yale can remain Yale, in a bubble. Withdrawing from the U.S. News program now gets ahead of those shifts.

Let me add a point in closing. Yale is boycotting U.S. News because it is biased against progressive institutions. I would be remiss if I did not draw an analogy to Judge Ho. He is boycotting Yale because it is biased against conservative institutions. Boycotts work to change behavior!

Update: Harvard Law School is also boycotting the rankings. Stanford and the other Ivies will probably follow. U.S. News may soon implode like FTX.

Huge news for the legal world. Both Harvard and Yale have decided to withdraw from the US News and World Report Law School Rankings process due to flaws in their methodology that distort incentives. pic.twitter.com/deAa26BCoD

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) November 16, 2022

Comments

[Sarcastr0]

Yale is boycotting U.S. News because it is biased against progressive institutions.

You made that up.
This whole thing is a fictional take on Yale's motives based on not understanding that progress and progressive are two different words.

Amazing how you manage to top yourself.

[Mr. Bumble]

From an expert at "making things up".

Where did your quote come from?

[LawTalkingGuy]

This post?

"Let me add a point in closing. Yale is boycotting U.S. News because it is biased against progressive institutions. I would be remiss if I did not draw an analogy to Judge Ho. He is boycotting Yale because it is biased against conservative institutions. Boycotts work to change behavior!"

[bernard11]

Another Bumble fumble.

[Mr. Bumble]

I stand corrected. I missed it,but SarcastrO's further post is then wrong.

[Sarcastr0]

Check out paragraph 2, the bolded bit.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Biased against conservative STUDENTS.
There is a difference.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Maybe to Blackman assisting needy students and encouraging students to do lower-paying public interest legal work is progressive. Literally doing anything other than viewing the legal profession as a club for wealthy conservative elites is progressive to him apparently.

[Dr. Ed 2]

But Judges are actually boycotting Yale STUDENTS -- and that is an important point to make. Would Big Law start doing likewise if Yale weren't in the USN&WR rankings?

[bernard11]

That looks like an awfully stupid thing to do, assuming their previous hiring practices were rational.

[Noscitur a sociis]

No.

Any other stupid questions?

[Michael P]

At least you finally admit that "progressives" don't actually stand for progress.

[y81]

I’m a little confused by this discussion. What facially neutral admissions criteria could Yale or any other school adopt that would result in the admission of significant numbers of black and Hispanic students? My understanding was that sociologists, psychologists, et al. have looked in vain for such a philosopher’s stone. For example, at every income level, whites and Asians have higher grades and test scores, so switching to class-based affirmative action will just result in admitting more whites and Asians from poor families, not more URM students.

[shawn_dude]

Did you mean for this to be as racist as it came out?

[Brett Bellmore]

Since it didn't come out racist at all, probably.

[Nige]

It really was.

[Brett Bellmore]

Your perception of racism is rather like my tinnitus. The whining noise sure seems real, but I know it's just in my head. Would that you were as aware.

[swood1000]

Did you mean for this to be as racist as it came out?

The core of the comment was a question as to what facially neutral admission criteria could be used. It asserts that "at every income level, whites and Asians have higher grades and test scores." Is this false? Where is the racism? Answer his question - what facially neutral admission criteria could be used?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Let me ask a very different question -- is the problem that a significant percentage of Yale's minority students are ONLY ABLE to get the low-paying public sector jobs because they aren't good enough to get other law jobs or clerkships?

Less qualified may well mean less qualified -- as reflected in lower bar passage rates and a whole lot of other things that Yale may wish to hide.

[Noscitur a sociis]

is the problem that a significant percentage of Yale’s minority students are ONLY ABLE to get the low-paying public sector jobs because they aren’t good enough to get other law jobs or clerkships?

No.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Where is your evidence, Noscitur a sociis?

I'm not aware of ANY research that evaluates graduate earning ability on the basis of race (law school or otherwise) let alone any that segregates it for those who wouldn't have been admitted but for the color of their skin.

Call me cynical but I do wonder if Yale is hiding something now that they wouldn't be able if they had to eliminate "special admit" categories. I also seem to vaguely remember complaints that some schools were playing games with the ABA statistics by briefly hiring their grads upon graduation.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Yale graduates don't take public sector jobs because they can't get "better" jobs, they take them because they're genuinely committed to mission those organizations carry out.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yale doesn't have its screwups who can neither pass the bar nor do much else?

Former MA Governor Deval Patrick flunked the bar exam *twice* -- and he'd graduated from Harvard with (purported) honors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deval_Patrick

It may be worse on the PhD level because law school has structure -- I'm reminded of the woman who got her Doctorate for inventing her own religion. I am not making this up, google "Doctress Neutopia." And, for the record, she's White.

But I've seen Black kids graduated because they are Black and the winding up with a totally useless degree....

[Dr. Ed 2]

There's also something else here -- Harvard & Yale are saying that high student debt and low starting salaries shouldn't be considered because the graduates are going into the public sector and hence won't be repaying much of the loan.

Repayment is income-based and only for 10 years if you are public sector. So a JSP-11 may only get $53K while the same person could probably get 2-4 times that in a private law firm, but the person in the law firm is going to have to make loan payments based on the $100K-$200K income, and for 20 years, not just 10.

Hence Harvard & Yale are going to get dinged by a debt-to-earning ratio that is going to look lower than the graduate of, say Northeastern School of Law because of the presumption that both will be repaying an equal percentage of their loans.

The other thing I find interesting is the mention of reducing debt upon graduation -- the sentence isn't exactly clear but WTF?

[Social Justice is neither]

The only neutral admissions policy would be to address the root cause rather than looking for a means to paper over your failure to address an issue. Universities are covering up the failure of parents and educrats over the entirety of K-12 and post grad schools keep up the charade with the same racist manipulations.

[AtR]

US News is to "an understanding of academia" as New York Times is to "unbiased news".

[Dr. Ed 2]

US News already has imploded -- it ain't what it was 40 years ago!
It used to be a magazine that published weekly -- now all it publishes are these purported guides.

[shawn_dude]

US News understood academia well enough to insert itself as an arbiter of a university's value and then sell that back to the universities in order to be ranked. It's a parasite, but it's a clever, fat parasite.

[dwb68]

US News rating will not implode, because there is a market for ratings (and also yelp reviews lol, see also Amazon stars). Students want to go to the most elite institution. Other institutions at #10 will be happy to move to #1 in the place of the Ivys.

Then the Ivys will have to justify why they arent being ranked ( and shadow rankings will develop).

[dwb68]

African-Americans with 99th percentile LSATs will still want to go to the most prestigious schools. If Harvard and Yale dilute their status by admiting anyone, the market will sort itself out.

Rankings are here to stay, whether a few institutions like it or not.

[Dr. Ed 2]

ARE there any?

[Sarcastr0]

dwb68: African-Americans with 99th percentile LSATs

Dr. Ed 2: ARE there any?

How about you don't make racist assumptions based on nothing?

Makes you seem less racist that way.

[Dr. Ed 2]

99th percentile is 1% and only 14% of the population is Black, with few taking the LSAT. I think it is a fair question.

[Sarcastr0]

You do realize how those two numbers have nothing to do with one another, because they have different baseline populations?

You are either very bad at statistics, or racist. Or probably both.

[bernard11]

You're an idiot.

[y81]

I can't find anything more recent, but according to this source, in 2004 there were 29 blacks nationwide who scored above 170 on the LSAT, which would be about the 97th percentile. The number in the 99th percentile would obviously be lower. If Sarcastro has more recent figures, I would love to see them.
https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/51_graduate_admissions_test.html

[Rossami]

I'm reminded of the "scandal" a few decades back when a bunch of the big business schools did the same thing. Students revolted and the schools were back and participating in the ratings within a few years.

[shawn_dude]

The rankings, in general, drive institutions to decisions that maximize ranking but do not maximize value to the faculty or students. It would be best if universities stopped participating en masse. The "selectivity" metrics, for example, can result in strange admissions decisions designed to increase the number of raw applicants, even among people who are unlikely to qualify, in order to make the admit-to-applicant ratio look more exclusive. The rankings measure ACT/SAT scores at a time when more universities have recognized these are expensive tests that are better at measuring household wealth than likely student success.

There's been a do we/don't we cost/benefit discussion about participating in the (for profit) US News & World Report ranking scam for quite a while now. Some universities depend on those scores to attract students. But the Yales of the world don't need them quite as much so something like this lawsuit may have tipped the balance on the cost/benefit calculation.

The real loser here: specialized analytics companies that sell consulting services designed to improve rankings by tweaking admissions processes and marketing.

Also: I cannot help but draw parallels to the black box search and social media algorithms used in the tech industry and how an SEO consultant industry sprang up to sell insights into those black boxes.

[bernard11]

All the rankings are pretty much a joke from the start.

Even if everything they count is some objective measure of quality, the assigned weights are going to be arbitrary. And of course the things they count are not all objective measures of quality.

[bernard11]

The Supreme Court will very soon make it difficult for elite private universities to use racial preferences for admission. Post-SFFA, the law school could no longer justify wide gaps between admission rates for applicants of different races. They can no longer rely on "personal" scores and other subterfuges. As a result, if Yale wants to keep its racial diversity numbers high, the overall LSAT and GPA scores would have to drop. And that decrease would affect the law school's rankings.

It's not clear to me what Josh's point is here. Is he saying that the only way to achieve racial diversity without racial preferences is to lower overall admission standards?

[tkamenick]

Git gud.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What's often done is something similar to what UMass did in the '90s -- you have a category of "special admits" that are, essentially, off the books so that you aren't averaging their GPAs or LSAT scores into your average. You do this because you know that you'd lower the averages, significantly, if you did.

I don't know exactly how you'd do it with law admissions but with undergrad you can comingle athletes and other groups with your minority admits and unless someone does an actual audit, and that means having first gotten your real numbers, no one will ever know.

What happened to UMass is that they were hemorrhaging freshmen at the time -- over half of those admitted one year didn't return the next year -- and that so skewed racial statistics that it was pretty clear what the actual special admit numbers were.

[shawn_dude]

The other way to do this is through transfer students--they're not counted. Only first-year admits are counted. If you are admitted to school X, take a full semester, and then transfer to school better-than-X, you continue to be counted as a non-graduate from X regardless of how successful you are at BTX. (Which sucks for X.) For undergrads, at least, Yale could create a transfer program that drew upon schools with high achievers in highly diverse areas of the country or create special scholarship programs.

For law school, I'm not familiar with that rare educational bird. But I know that transfers are a different beast for grad schools.

[Dr. Ed 2]

yes, community colleges get nailed for this.

[Ed Grinberg]

See if this fairly recent news story, that also deals with the issue of "racial diversity" in an academic setting, answers your question:
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2021-04-30.html#08

[tkamenick]

"Second, by heavily weighting students' test scores and college grades, the U.S. News rankings have over the years created incentives for law schools to direct more financial aid toward applicants based on their LSAT scores and college GPAs without regard to their financial need."

They say that like it's a bad thing. Are they saying they DON'T want to attract the best and brightest?

[Dr. Ed 2]

THIS may be the issue -- if you go with pure merit-based financial aid, you won't be able to justify funding Black students whose "merit" is less than White students. I can't speak to law schools but places like UMass are going to be in some serious trouble with their grad fellowships and such -- admissions is only going to be the first of many lawsuits if SFA wins.

But say you have an "admit" level -- say 39 on the LSAT, which is what I got back in the day. Then you will have a merit funding level that is higher -- say 43.

But if you are letting in Black students who get 29 on the LSAT, then you can have a Black merit level of 33 and justify that on the basis of "diversity" and the SCOTUS-granted right to discriminate. But once that right is gone, a student like me (39 LSAT and not funded) can sue when black students who only got 33s get funded while I don't.

Yes, I know that law school admissions are way more complicated, and that the LSAT has been renormed at least twice and now has a three digit score, but while more complicated the principle would be the same -- less qualified Black students getting funding. And without the money, the Black student would probably go somewhere else, even if admitted.

[Dr. Ed 2]

In other words, I can't sue for admissions discrimination if I am admitted because I haven't been harmed and hence won't have standing.

But I CAN sue if I am not given the aid package that a less qualified Black student is given, at least on the 1L level. (It could get messy on the other two years because they could bring in "academic judgement" stuff on my potential post grad.

[shawn_dude]

Again, here, you can create special scholarship programs that are aimed at black students. (IANAL) If a private donor creates a race-based scholarship program, which already exist at many schools, you could provide a form of aid to a black student admitted with a lower score. In addition to merit aid, students at private schools can also get need-based aid and it can all be combined into a package of scholarships, merit, and need-based aid to come up with a final amount.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Still not sure those would be upheld.

[princess jasmine]

I thought you dumped twitter?

[Brett Bellmore]

"Boycotts can be used to urge fight bias against conservatives and progressives."

What's "urge" fighting?

[garysixpack]

If Yale is indeed worried about drooping LSAT scores, why not go test optional like Yale is doing with undergrad SAT scores? Only applicants with the highest LSAT will submit them in a test optional situation, and the rest of the applicants can be selected based on (inflated) GPA and "personality".

[Sarcastr0]

It is not in evidence that Yale is worried about dropping LSAT scores.

[swood1000]

why not go test optional like Yale is doing with undergrad SAT scores

One of the problems with affirmative action is that it stigmatizes whatever group is getting the preference. Then, after graduation, employers devalue members of that group, assume that they probably weren’t qualified for admission to an elite law school in the first place, and don’t hire them. This is exacerbated in the case of students who are given a preference on admission but whose academic prowess really is lower than that of the other students, resulting in their graduating in the bottom half of the class.

Making the LSAT optional would solve part of the problem, by keeping lower scores out of the class average, but it doesn’t help with the reluctance of high-salary employers to hire the stigmatized students, who then get jobs at “public interest” firms, which are apparently easier to get and which pay a lot less but lower the average salaries for graduates of the school, hurting the US News rankings.

[mydisplayname]

Why boycott? Instead, jump on board: Donald Trump could be elected Speaker of the House (even though he is not a member of the House).

Wouldn't it be fun to have Nanci Pelosi hand the gavel to Donald Trump?

[Squirrelloid]

I’m just going to ignore Blackman’s ill-founded hot take here, and focus on Harvard’s message: in what world does Harvard have ‘limited resources’ for scholarships? It could decline to charge tuition for every law student admitted off the income generated by its endowment, and barely notice the difference in endowment growth.

(Tuition at Harvard Law is currently ~70k/year. There were 559 students in this year’s entering class. That’s ~39 million in tuition. Harvard’s endowment is ~50 billion. Even a paltry 1% return on investment for the endowment is ~500 million. Heck, there’s just shy of 2,000 undergraduates in the same year's class paying ~55k/year, which is just 110 million. Harvard could offer a full ride to its entire student body for less than 2% returns on its endowment. (Approximate 4 classes as being 4x as much). Scarce resources?)

[bacchys]

Judge Ho and Yale are both so woke.

[Frank Drackman]

Wish my Auburn Tigers would withdraw from the College Football rankings.

[Ed Grinberg]

This decision was made in the shadow of Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. The Supreme Court will very soon make it difficult for elite private universities to use racial preferences for admission. Post-SFFA, the law school could no longer justify wide gaps between admission rates for applicants of different races. They can no longer rely on "personal" scores and other subterfuges. As a result, if Yale wants to keep its racial diversity numbers high, the overall LSAT and GPA scores would have to drop. And that decrease would affect the law school's rankings.

The discussion probably went like this:
dean: It looks like we'll have to [see above].
assistant dean: But won't that negatively affect our rankings?
dean: No problem! We'll withdraw from the rankings!
assistant dean: But won't that negatively affect the quality of our student body, the quality of our school?!
dean: You're fired.

[Alan Vanneman]

How many people got Justice Kagan's reference to Daniel Webster's "argument" in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, “It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!” Classy!

[Ridgeway]

At least 2.

I'd also note that Dartmouth students and alumni have been fighting for about 40 years not to become "Darvard."

[y81]

At least 3.

[bernard11]

4

[Commenter_XY]

I did not get it. Can you explain?

[TMLutas]

Perhaps US News would benefit from a methodology change to rank schools whether or not they cooperate.

[DJK]

Berkeley just opted out.

[Sorcer23]

Perhaps U.S. News and World Report should merely state that Yale, Harvard, and perhaps the other "elite" colleges just prefer to discriminate against White and Asian students, which would be obvious if they let their data be examined by our magazine.