2008 Woodie Awards
UI law school slips in rankings
Briana Byrd - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: Metro
With the UI College of Law falling out of the U.S. News & World Report's national top 25 rankings, some students have expressed concerned about the drop.
Although many departments fluctuate in the annual rankings, law-school ratings are especially important because small, "statistically insignificant" differences in the numbers can have an enormous effect on people's perceptions of institutions, according to an article that appeared in the March 2006 edition of Law & Society Review.
The study, "Do Rankings Really Matter? The Effects of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on the Admissions Process of Law Schools" showed that they do.
It's a downward spiral, said article co-author Michael Sauder, a UI assistant professor of sociology. When the rankings drop, so do the quality of students, which, in turn, affects schools' rankings even more.
The study used information from U.S. law schools from 1996 to 2003 and interviewed deans and administrators around the nation. Sauder said the initial impetus for the article came from a desire to see how putting numbers on something like school quality would effect the law school decision making as well as student perception.
"I know that when I came in, it was a point of pride that I could tell people that my law school was in the top 25; it's just too bad that I can't say that anymore," said Emily Scholten, a second-year UI law student.
Law schools are very tightly bunched together in the rankings, so a drop of three or four places doesn't mean anything significant changed in the school - it might just be that there were small statistical changes, Sauder said.
"The main point is that a change in the rankings doesn't necessarily mean a change in the quality of the school," he added. "If a school dropped four or five spots in the rankings, the number of applications and amount of yield would drop. There's a statistical relationship between your rank and how many people accepted to your school decided to go."
Although the drop in rankings might worry some, Sauder said that school ratings are not necessarily as objective as these students believe.
"One of the things that's really clear is schools go up and down every year," Sauder said. "Schools are bound to go up or down a few places every year. These reactions are very typical whenever a school drops in the rankings."
E-mail DI reporter Briana Byrd at:
briana-byrd@uiowa.edu
Although many departments fluctuate in the annual rankings, law-school ratings are especially important because small, "statistically insignificant" differences in the numbers can have an enormous effect on people's perceptions of institutions, according to an article that appeared in the March 2006 edition of Law & Society Review.
The study, "Do Rankings Really Matter? The Effects of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on the Admissions Process of Law Schools" showed that they do.
It's a downward spiral, said article co-author Michael Sauder, a UI assistant professor of sociology. When the rankings drop, so do the quality of students, which, in turn, affects schools' rankings even more.
The study used information from U.S. law schools from 1996 to 2003 and interviewed deans and administrators around the nation. Sauder said the initial impetus for the article came from a desire to see how putting numbers on something like school quality would effect the law school decision making as well as student perception.
"I know that when I came in, it was a point of pride that I could tell people that my law school was in the top 25; it's just too bad that I can't say that anymore," said Emily Scholten, a second-year UI law student.
Law schools are very tightly bunched together in the rankings, so a drop of three or four places doesn't mean anything significant changed in the school - it might just be that there were small statistical changes, Sauder said.
"The main point is that a change in the rankings doesn't necessarily mean a change in the quality of the school," he added. "If a school dropped four or five spots in the rankings, the number of applications and amount of yield would drop. There's a statistical relationship between your rank and how many people accepted to your school decided to go."
Although the drop in rankings might worry some, Sauder said that school ratings are not necessarily as objective as these students believe.
"One of the things that's really clear is schools go up and down every year," Sauder said. "Schools are bound to go up or down a few places every year. These reactions are very typical whenever a school drops in the rankings."
E-mail DI reporter Briana Byrd at:
briana-byrd@uiowa.edu
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Blogger Boy
posted 3/31/08 @ 6:42 PM CST
Check out this blog for a more in-depth discussion of the issue, particularly as it pertains to Iowa College of Law.
http://obscureminority.blogspot. (Continued…)
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