Bob Morse Responds, Tries to Push Blame on Law Schools

Well, after last week's New York Times story on how law schools use merit scholarships to boost their USNWR ranking, which get pulled away after the first year. As I noted, this is the expected response to such a system where schools are incentivized to act in a way that doesn't always neatly conform to standards of ethics or what an objectively-good law school would do. All of this is the natural consequence of the USNWR rankings having almost no merit in actually evaluating law schools.

Naturally, Bob Morse has decided to respond to USNWR role in the scholarship game and, as seemingly usual, wants to pretend it's someone else's issue. After a "no duh" paragraph about students understanding risks and the need for disclosure, Bob lays out this gem of a passage (numbers mine for purposes of commentary below):

It's clear that the U.S. News law school rankings have a (1) large impact on law schools and prospective law school students. (2) However, the U.S. News Best Law School rankings are not why students lose their scholarships. In addition, the article (3) implies that the U.S. News rankings are the key factor behind why law schools are offering more merit-based aid and less need-based aid in order to enroll students with higher LSATs and GPAs and, as a result, improve in the rankings. (4) Law schools need to take far more direct responsibility for their policies instead of citing the oft-repeated claims that they are forced into these actions solely because U.S. News exerts so much power over law school behavior.

(1) With the power of national journalism (or are we going to admit that USNWR is no longer "journalism?") comes a grave responsibility in understanding the effects of one's words. That's why it's essential for the journalist to report accurately what happens, not base his conclusions on small sample sizes or unexamined self-reporting. And the journalist has a responsibility not to have a conflict of interest in the resolution of what happens. Bob's admission that his rankings have great effect is an admission that he either has a great amount of responsibility to get it right or that he's not a journalist at all.

(2) Technically, no, Bob, but your rankings are essential in establishing a system where parties act on reliance on insincere (as in, they're getting pulled after one year) scholarship offers - often advertised as three-year deals - that only exist because your magazine irrationally believes the LSAT to be relevant to how good a law school is; and many of those students actually do lose their scholarships. It also causes the rankings to favor richer schools, possibly at the expense of more efficient ones, and it causes schools to shift more money to their merit scholarship balances. Your magazine is a but-for cause of this mess, and disclaiming responsibility because you had nothing to do with Johnny taking the bait and getting a C+ in torts is absurd.

(3) "Implies?" No, Bob. The article "implied" nothing, and to say otherwise is disingenuous weasel-wording.

(4) Why don't you take responsibility as a "journalist" for the power your words have over people's actions, especially those who need metrics to boast of their accomplishments? There are countless steps you could take to prevent potentially-deceptive and abusive behavior from occurring. You could factor scholarship retention rates into your rankings. You could factor need-based scholarships into your rankings. You could collect and disclose scholarship offering and retention rates. You could do surveys comparing students' expected debt totals to their actual debt totals and penalize schools for the difference.

There are all sorts of steps to take to aid USNWR be a detached voice that helps the consumers understand the truth and have the facts necessary to make a decision about what law schools are good. To date, USNWR has done none of them and has persisted in using a formula that has nothing to do with actual law school merit. And yet, when they're called on it, they throw up their hands and say "that's the law schools' fault!"

Well, no, it's not. As a news institution, USNWR has a responsibility not to be a party in things like this. As long as they have the word "news" in the masthead, people like Bob Morse can't abnegate that responsibility by some twisted logic. So Bob, don't throw up your hands. Do your damned job.

Either that, or change the name and admit you're just a puppet for the elite educational lobby.