UC Davis joins top law schools in boycott against U.S. News college rankings

UC Davis School of Law will no longer participate in the influential U.S. News & World Report rankings, a move that follows similar announcements by other top law schools that have criticized the magazine’s methodology as misleading and flawed.

Dean Kevin Johnson announced the school’s decision on Monday, saying it followed consultations with faculty, campus leadership, students and alumni.

UC Davis ranks 37 on the list, tying with UC Irvine School of Law.

“Small changes in one variable can lead to a dramatic shake-up of the rankings,” Dean Kevin Johnson said in a statement. “The regular ‘corrections’ of the rankings by U.S. News show their volatility and undermine their legitimacy.”

Johnson said that the failures in the ranking are too many to list, but said the process punishes schools for encouraging public service fellowships, overemphasizes standardized test scores, and fails to take resources at public law schools into consideration.

He also said the ranking system effectively punishes efforts to attract students from a variety of backgrounds. Johnson said that when the rankings focus on test scores like the LSAT, it “effectively discourages the admission of African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American applicants in a country where fewer than 20% of all lawyers are people of color.”

U.S. News does not factor in a school’s racial diversity.

The magazine uses data provided by the law schools, but also from the American Bar Association and surveys.

“We respect each institution’s decision to choose whether or not to submit their data to U.S. News,” US News said in a statement. “However, U.S. News has a responsibility to prospective students to provide comparative information that allows them to assess these institutions. U.S. News will therefore continue to rank the nearly 200 accredited law schools in the United States.”

UC Davis School of Law’s decision comes nearly two weeks after the law schools at UC Berkeley, Harvard and Yale pulled out of the rankings. Yale, the country’s top law school, was the first to break from the magazine.

Stanford University, Georgetown and Columbia also joined the boycott.