MBA USNEWS Flawed Numbers, Kansas Applications Down Big, and Duke Finds New Way to Grab Tuition Money

1. Grad School U.S. News Fraud:

From BusinessWeek:

The Gainesville Sun last night reported that the University of Florida Warrington College of Business supplied the magazine with inaccurate job-placement data, resulting in a higher ranking.

An anonymous complaint made through the university’s ethics hotline in August alleged that 37 percent of UF’s 2009 MBA graduating class had jobs at graduation, while 53 percent had jobs three months later. The figures supplied to USNWR indicated 53 percent placement at graduation and 79 percent three months later. UF was ranked 39th in 2009, falling two spots from the year before; in 2010 it fell to 47th.

An investigation found no evidence of willfulness, but you can't help but wonder at the similarities. Does any school ever drop as a result of submitting false numbers? Gee, I wonder why that never happens. In any event, the article gives us another look into the askew, dullard mind of Bob Morse, the laziest journalist/statistician on planet Earth:

[Morse] said he thought data accuracy was not a widespread problem, but it's one that should be addressed by organizations such as the American Bar Association and the MBA-CSC in their capacity as standard-setting bodies, not by the media outlets that conduct rankings.

"It's not my problem" is just about the shittiest possible answer a bona fide journalist or statistician can come up with. People who are actually interested in finding the truth - rather than serving as a press agent for the official organizations that supply them - actually get off their asses and find the truth, ensure accurate data, stop official manipulation where it's suspected, etc. I think at this point any illusion of U.S. News being anything more than a puppet with no journalistic or mathematical intentions is shattered by Morse's own admissions.

2. Kansas Applications Down

From the K.C. Star:

The University of Kansas Law School says its applications declined 23 percent for this year compared with last year.
...
About 850 students applied to the law school this year, down from about 1,100 last year.

They're still far from being underwater (they only admit about 350-400 each year), but this is a state flagship university. If you want to ultimately practice is Kansas or the Kansas City metro area, you can't find a better school to attend. I wonder how the quality of their applicant pool is, and I wonder what this kind of drop signifies for places like Washburn and UMKC that are 2nd-choices for KU applicants. I imagine we start seeing sub-150 LSATs more prevalently and schools have to reach further than they normally would.

3. Duke Innovates in Ways to Leach

From the Nat'l Law Journal:

The school announced this week that it will launch a master of laws program in judicial studies geared specifically to judges....

The LL.M. program will open during the summer of 2012 to 10 to 15 sitting judges. They will take intensive four- to six-week sessions over the course of two summers. The curriculum will include classes and seminars in which both judges and scholars look at the history of the judiciary and judicial decision-making. Participants will examine topics including judicial independence, bias, the selection process and use of specialized courts.

Tuition for this four- to six-week program? $17k. For roughly 1/6 of the normal school year, with a guaranteed small class size and what surely will be the lightest teaching, lowest resource demand in academic history, the school is charging over 40% of its full-year tuition price.

Ca-ching! I'm sure Duke justifies this by some inflated beliefs that the judiciary could use the advanced training, but let's be real: most courts are overworked and, frankly, the judges have better things to do than take classes at Duke for $17k and a worthless L.L.M. If a judge in my district went to this thing and was subject to election, I'd vote against him/her on principle.

But hey, you have to hand it to Duke. If kids are going to start turning down law school to find better uses of their money and time, the law schools are naturally going to move to pushing education for existing practitioners, more than they have already.

US News and World Report Torn Between Shilling and Journalism

I get that US News and World Report has little actual news or commentary to offer aside from being known as the publication that helps market colleges by ranking them, but at least they could have a consistent editorial view.

For example, this article describes how law schools are adjusting to a "suddenly dog-eat-dog job market" (Really, David van Zandt? "Suddenly?") and a changing BigLaw model.

Starting salaries are flat or down, too, according to NALP—the Association for Legal Career Professionals in Washington, D.C. The median starting pay at firms with more than 700 lawyers in New York and Los Angeles was still $160,000 in 2010, but markets like Boston and San Francisco dropped from that level back to $145,000. Overall, the median starting salary at private firms dropped to $115,000 last year from $130,000 in 2009.

Belt-tightening at larger firms has had a ripple effect, pushing grads to pursue government and nonprofit jobs they previously wouldn't have considered. "I feel that I'm competing with everybody, for every job I've applied for," says Jeremy Wolff, 31, a 2010 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston who left a technology career to focus on civil rights or social justice work. He currently is working as a research consultant with a team of professors from his law school, covering his living expenses but not providing enough to begin paying down his six-figure debt. "If I knew then what I know now, I would emphatically not go to law school," he says. "I think the legal job market has fundamentally changed."

Okay, so overall, nationwide, starting salaries at private firms have dropped 11.5% in two years. That's big, as is the fact that the graduates now denied BigLaw compete with other graduates for all those other jobs, like whatever work there is at the DA's office, MidLaw, or legal aid foundations. That trajectory should be a priority concern for anyone contemplating applying for law school now.

Now let's head to US News and World Report's Law Schools: Tips and Stats:

First year associates at large private law firms can expect to make $160,000 in metropolitan markets including New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., according to the Association for Legal Career Professionals, known as NALP, in its 2010 Associate Salary Survey. In other markets, such as Boston and San Francisco, salaries can range from $110,000 to $160,000, with a median of $145,000.

First of all what a "large private law firm" is to a prospective law student is probably different than what a "large private law firm" is to the NALP. And wouldn't it be responsible to mention that the $145,000 is a falling median? And isn't it irresponsible to suggest applicants now - i.e., job seekers in 2014 - "can expect" to make $160,000 when salaries have fallen in other markets?

And overall, the "article" seems to be a blatant advertisement for going to law schools, e.g.:

If you are set on a career in public interest law, don't let finances stop you.

You mean like the "finances" that there's very little actual work in public interest law?

Intellectual property and energy law continue to be lucrative—and competitive—specialities [sic].

If it's competitive, it's likely not going to be lucrative in the future. See the other article your same news organization put out the exact same day.

My big question to US News is this: Why did the first article I cite espouse a view that there has been a fundamental change in the job market, while the second article sold law school on the premise that the job market is pretty much moving right along, i.e., getting back to the pre-recession normal? ("many partners at large law firms agree that the market has nearly stabilized.")

All these articles seem to show is US News' apparent hypocrisy. On one hand, it feels beholden to its journalistic routes, finding it necessary to report truth and - gee whiz - cite its sources. On the other, it realizes its existence is dependent on the college industry continuing to sell the idea of education as the path to a dream job. To hell with journalistic integrity (Who at the "large law firms" are agreeing with this? Who knows! Just say "Many").

I appreciate their attempt at journalism. The first piece is insightful and should be required reading for those contemplating attendance. But it's hard to take that piece seriously when the same organization trumpets law school as the land of public interest saviors and $160,000 salaries as if it were reading from a admission's department brochure.

Washington Post Reports on Law School

Sometimes I wish journalists would just let the subjects speak on something a la a film documentary or an interview. Today's Washington Post article on law school employment numbers and transparency is an example of this.

A chorus of complaints from newly minted lawyers who say they were lured into the profession by schools that reported too-rosy employment prospects found a sympathetic ear last week, as the American Bar Association urged law schools to present more accurate information.
...
Law school, once viewed as a golden ticket, has become for some graduates a liability. Though law school has never been cheap, annual tuition and fees at private schools on average increased from $21, 790 in 2000 to $35,743 in 2009, with graduates typically borrowing more than $100,000 to finance their education.

It's about as pedestrian as you can get, and I have to wonder what the Post's motivation was in publishing a fraction of what the New York Times did last month. And I don't understand the shout-out to Esq. Never, a blog that's updated once in the last six months, when there are so many better examples of "scamblogging" out there. Doesn't "Jobless Juris Doctor" convey the message clear enough?

But I suppose any publicity for the truth about law school numbers is good publicity, even if it's just an elementary summary of what other media outlets have been doing for the last month.

But I do wish they would have checked their facts a little bit:

Promoting this sort of voluntary disclosure is the mission of a nonprofit group called Law School Transparency, started by two Villanova University law school students in 2009, but thus far it has received little concrete response.

Yikes; hopefully this is corrected soon, for the LST guys' sake. They went to Vanderbilt, which is a significantly better school than Villanova, a place that has submitted false data to reporting agencies, which did not get a mention in the article; personally, I think it's a wonderful example of a well-known school fudging the numbers. Also would have loved to see them mention that Georgetown has manipulated its employment data, since that would appeal directly to the Post's readership.

On the Harvard Law Review Electing an Openly-Gay President

I fully support gay equality, and I think the people who fight tooth and nail to deny gay people the privileges of their heterosexual counterparts are honestly mentally damaged. I think the minority of people still out there who just don't accept gay people or think it's kind of hedonistic choice aren't going to have their minds or their behavior altered by a low-circulation journal's actions.

Thus, I'm less enthused than others at the news that the Harvard Law Review elected its first openly-gay President. But Harvard apparently thinks it's worth making a fuss over. Here are the first three paragraphs of Harvard's brief official online release:

The Harvard Law Review has elected Mitchell Reich ’12 as its 125th president.

“Mitch has proven himself as an outstanding editor — insightful, hardworking, and deeply committed to the Review and its community,” said outgoing President Zach Schauf ’11. “He will make a superb president, and I look forward to seeing him guide the Review in the year ahead.”

Before attending Harvard Law School, Reich graduated from Yale College with a B.A. in Classics and Political Science. He is a native of New York, and is the first openly gay editor elected to lead the Review.

Harvard placed his sexuality in the same paragraph as where he is from and where he went for undergrad. His law school accomplishments? Where he has worked? What area he plans to practice in after attending this professional school? Who his significant other and family are? These qualities deserve no mention. But his vague sexuality - what sex organs he prefers to play with - has suddenly become basic demographic information.

At my own law school, I don't know everyone's sexuality, nor do I care to. Some are transparent about it, either incessantly talking about their spouse or purposely fitting into established stereotypes. But with others, it's one of those personal details you wouldn't necessarily know without knowing the person well, or unless they were notorious in their bedroom-hopping and became the subject of gossip.

This is fairly normal and is, of course, an obvious difference between sexuality and race. With race, possible discrimination is much easier. Subconscious racism is an intellectual possibility. But if you don't subjectively know someone's gay (even if they're "openly" gay), how can one discriminate against them? In the past, I've worked with people for months without knowing their sexuality. I might have had educated guesses if pressed, but nothing I'd bet money on, and a few revelations one way or the other have genuinely surprised me.

But overall, I just don't care. I'm not more likely to vote for someone because they're gay or because they're straight. And although I know the white supremacists have to find their lawyers somewhere, I imagine there are very few law students who would hold one's sexuality against him or her. As a result, a law review electing a gay man isn't really a milestone at all, because there's really no tide that the individual is swimming against. It's not going to surprise anyone or change anyone's behavior towards the sub-group.

But of course that doesn't stop people who like to pretend milestones happen every day and have undue significance. Take, for example, Vivia Chen's take for AmLaw Daily:

Could Mitch Reich be the first openly gay president of the United States one day? Well, if history is a clue, it's possible. Harvard Law School just announced that Reich, a second-year law student, has been elected president of Harvard Law Review--the first openly gay person to lead the journal in its 125-year history.

President Obama, as you might know, was the first black person to head the school's Law Review back in 1990.

Right.

The thing about "milestones" is that the word is not just a synonym for "that which hasn't happened before." The event has to mean something. It has to change a mass of people on some individual level, like making baseball's owners collectively realize that they can employ African-Americans.

There are at least three reasons why this doesn't qualify as a milestone, or even something that would be news-worthy. The first is that I can practically guarantee you that, as a matter of statistics, someone homosexual has led the Harvard Law Review in the last 125 years. The second is that this is hardly the first openly gay law review editor in chief. Heck, there are schools in far more conservative parts of the country than Boston that have had journals devoted to gay rights for 20 years. I have a hard time believing that no gay people have run that one, meaning no "barrier" was broken by Harvard's selection.

But wait! you might say. The Harvard Law Review is a prestigious publication, the most prestigious of all prestigious law reviews!

And that brings me to my third reason this ain't no milestone: no one reads or cares about the bleeping Harvard Law Review. Here is a search trend chart comparing the Harvard Law Review's search interest to the openly-gay and completely-inane Perez Hilton's:

And here's one comparing the Harvard Law Review to openly-gay writer Andrew Sullivan's:


The Harvard Law Review's website gets about the same number of hits as Third-Tier Reality's. If Nando suddenly came out of the closet, would it be front page news? Is it news when a gay author sells 1000 copies of a book? But somehow a homosexual becoming president of a journal with a very, very low non-academic circulation is a news-worthy event.

The further response here is probably that the Harvard Law Review (a) has influenced legal policy for over a century and (b) has been the springboard for successful people, like Obama. Both of these are a poor reason to see this as a milestone of gay rights. If influence on policy is what matters, there should have been a two-decades long celebration as openly gay people became accepted in the D.C. hierarchy and in some corporate officerships and directors' spots. If this is the standard, the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" was a major milestone, but at the end of the day the Harvard Law Review is still an insignificant outpost in the middle of obscure land. As for the fact that famous people have served on it before, well, Abe Lincoln chopped a lot of wood and once ran a convenience store.

The truth is that the Harvard Law Review is, was, and always will be, part trade journal and part house organ. It, like all law journals, is more concerned with stocking resumes and providing an outlet for professorial bombast than actually advancing scholarship or educating the public. If it operated under normal capitalist conditions, it would fail, or at best be a struggling, obscure journal.

Of all the people hailing this as a milestone, I would venture to guess that less than 1% have actually read anything published in the Harvard Law Review. I would guess only a fraction could actually name a Harvard Law Review President other than Obama. Its significance stems solely from the public perception that the Harvard Law Review does something prestigious, noble, or worthwhile. Like many perceptions about the law, it's in error.

I mean to take nothing away from Reich. I know it's an honor, and I know how much hard work goes into getting that little tag on the resume.

But I feel mildly sorry for him that we live in a world where his sexual preferences - a very personal aspect of one's life - have become a newsworthy item and a de facto marketing point for his university because people want to believe that the Harvard Law Review is something more than it is.

But it's hard to feel sorry for him when he himself understands the non-relevance of his sexuality while agreeing it is "significant:"

Reich says that being gay is a non-issue for the Harvard Law Review community, but that he recognizes the significance of the election. He says that while he was in high school, before coming out of the closet, he found it hard to picture achieving his dreams and be gay at the same time.

“If I had seen someone who was the president of the Harvard Law Review and [also] openly gay, that would have been helpful to me,” Reich says.

Seriously? When Reich was in high school, Harvard's own state had an openly-gay Congressman and New York had an openly-gay federal court judge. I understand the importance of seeing people with your own immutable characteristic doing well in life, but unless you're a legal masochist, both Congressman and Federal Judge are superior positions to doing anything on a barely-read law review. Furthermore, I can't imagine the average gay high school youth today gaining a damned thing from this guy joining an elite academia club that maybe 0.1% of real-life high school students actually care about. Most conservatives lump the Harvard Law Review in with the academia types who are already going to hell for supporting homosexuality, so it's a complete non-event (conformity with the reality they already believe in) for the overwhelming majority of anti-gay parents.

When an active NBA player comes out of the closet, that will be a newsworthy, courage-giving, mind-changing moment. But this? Have some self-awareness, Harvard.

Because ultimately, whether or not this is a milestone should really hinge on whether or not it affects the standing of other gay people, e.g., if it gives the irrationally-conservative mom and dad the power to accept their child's sexuality or if it gives the youth the courage to be himself or herself without anxiety.

I just don't see this event doing that in any regard. I can't imagine Harvard does either, aside from seeing the positive publicity that would shine upon them if they made this individual's sexuality a matter of public concern.

Fallout from NYT Article: Are Economists Dumb?

There are a number of articles regurgitating what was said in the NYT yesterday, including the Baltimore Sun, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal (wouldn't it be nice if these guys spent their morning time working on their own stories instead of recycling someone else's?)

But one short reaction piece that especially struck me came from Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. To wit:

Most of the thousands of economists gathered this weekend at the annual convention of the American Economics Association in Denver would probably agree with MIT economist David Autor, that the big problem facing the U.S. labor market is that our workforce is not being adequately educated.

By contrast, the NYT devoted a lengthy article to tell readers about the dismal job market facing young lawyers. . . . It is worth noting that if Autor is right, then the NYT has seriously misrepresented the state of the legal market.

Wrong. Completely, stupendously, absolutely wrong.

First, Autor and the other economists are correct on some small level. We do need a more educated workforce, but it must be education that fits our economic needs. Piling on random years in school does not meet that need, and a society where everyone has a law degree is no more "educated" than a society of high school dropout dunces. We need people to study medicine, hard sciences research, international business, foreign languages, etc.; a law degree for a lower-tiered grad right now is no better than an art history degree in meeting our need to be "more educated."

Second, screaming "more education" from the mountaintops is no answer to American's economic problems; rather, it's calling for a band-aid after a grenade has torn two limbs and left shrapnel all over Uncle Sam's back. We have simply farmed out everything that can be farmed out without sharing the profits of the farming even though the costs are carried by everyone. That's essentially created a class of people who are forever screwed in this economy.

What happened with law school (and in undergraduate education and by some accounts in pharmacy school and in film school and in paralegal programs) can certainly happen in every other area of education where apparent demand (boosted by naive economists, advertising, and mass media) can far outpace actual demand, causing a glut of applicants, skyrocketing enrollments and tuition, a veritable economic bubble, and a lot of aspiring, otherwise-intelligent young people getting screwed with non-dischargable debt.

People have been "getting educated" for years. There are people in my law school who are trilingual and on advanced degree number three. Generation Y is the most paper-educated in history thus far and guess what? It's no defense when there's someone in India who can do the job for cheaper. The Indians and Chinese and Vietnamese and Malaysians can educate themselves just the same as we do. Why would a degree be any defense when the Board of Directors at Company XYZ decides to move some operation overseas or to Mexico to cut costs?

Such thinking is silly and short-sighted, a thoughtless solution to a weighty, perplexing problem.

The fact that something calling itself the Center for Economic and Policy Research can neither see right through this nor see that even if it were entirely accurate the New York Times may have been dead-on accurate is rather pathetic.

Sun-Times Wants You To Meet Unemployed Attorney / About the So-Called "Scamblogs" Being Unnecessary

I've noticed there are a number of people who comment on the so-called "scamblog" movement (I don't really like that term, but whatever) say that law students are now "on notice" and that the blogs - Nando's in particular - are repetitive because the message is already out there/it all comes back to the economy/the message is self-evident/etc.

I'd like you all to meet Randah Atassi through the eyes of Chicago Sun-Times reporter Francine Knowles.

There was a time when being a new law school graduate pretty much assured you of quickly landing a good job.

Twenty-five-year old Chicagoan Randah Atassi, who graduated from [John Marshall Law School] last May after clerking for two judges and completing an internship at the Cook County Public Defender’s office, has learned that’s no longer the case.

At first, I thought I would like this article, as it looked like it was clearly going to debunk the myth that law school is a wonderful place to send your children. But then I read the brief article and realized that the article, by a professional business journalist, is:

• Limited to this one individual and lacking in any discussion of the systemic problems (no discussion of "...there are [x] number of people similarly-situated..."
• Couched in terms of the recession rather than inherent problems in the education system ("She thinks it’s going to be a couple of years before the job climate improves dramatically," the article says, as if it's an inevitability.)
• Optimistic rather than objective.

Furthermore, Ms. Knowles chose a rather poor subject to garner sympathies. I don't automatically discredit John Marshall because it's in the 4th Tier, but some would. It would have been infinitely better if she could have found a Northwestern grad that wasn't living in a penthouse somewhere - heck, even a Northwestern grad who's only making 40k. That would have done far more to shoot down the stereotypes that need to be slaughtered than showcasing a mediocre school graduate struggling in a struggling economy.

And Ms. Atassi doesn't really come off as that bright. To wit:

“I think there are jobs out there, but what people don’t realize is there’s a huge number of unemployed people all fighting for the same jobs, and the competition is just so fierce that it’s kind of hard to make yourself known and stand out in a crowd of people regardless of how well qualified or how overqualified you are for the job.”

That means there are "no jobs." And then there's this whopper to end the article:

“I know a lot of friends who graduated (in 2009) who it took them a really long time to find a job, but eventually they all did,” she said. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It might take a lot longer than it did in years past, but we’re not going to be unemployed forever.”

Okay, even if they "all" found jobs, what are they making and where? Is it enough to cover the 150k in loans one needs to pay tuition at John Marshall?

The fact that this article - in a major newspaper by a so-called business reporter (shouldn't a business reporter be skeptical of claims of inevitable employment or job creation?) - ends on a note of optimism, as if this is a Great Depression story written from hindsight 50 years from now ("There is a light at the end of the tunnel") shows exactly why the blogs need to exist.

The media, by and large, still views these issues within their chosen frame of a recession human interest story. Their overwhelming desire to write within that preordained narrative (well, that and their laziness) means that they will not ask the necessary questions or do the necessary research. They will not realize that this is not a recessionary issue but a systemic one that is much deeper than one otherwise-"qualified" individual not being able to find a job.

The Sun-Times website generates 455,000 page views every single day. Third Tier Reality is under 200k for the entire time it has publicly tracked page hits. Furthermore, the Sun-Times has the masthead of one of Chicago's flagship papers and carries with it credibility, even if that credibility is misplaced.

The sad truth is that someone apparently uninformed like Francine Knowles has infinitely more power to shape perceptions among prospective law students and their families than the so-called "scamblogs," no matter who is actually "correct" or "right." That reality isn't inevitable - it can certainly change over time - but it's only a fragment of evidence to show the uphill battle the bloggers face in exposing the problems in the legal field.

Saying students are "on notice" because they should have done their research is silly in a world where information is so skewed and dominated by parties that always end things with "there's light at the end of the tunnel." A prospective law student who had been reading Third Tier Reality or First Tier Toilet or BIDER or JJD or SMS may have put credence in their words and may have been prompted to ask additional questions.

But when he sees that the Sun-Times found a 4th tier student who claims all her friends from '09 have jobs and that there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel and that the job climate will improve dramatically "in a couple of years," what's he going to think? He's likely going to think that it's all recessionary, and that if he goes to law school, the economy will have turned around in 3 years and things will be back to the 2005 state. For many people, rebutting the essential claims of the so-called "scamblogs" is that simple, and that's why continuing to spread awareness about the extent of the problems in the legal field is imperative, even if it is repetitive, and why law students may not actually be "on notice" even if they do what research they can.

On the USNWR Rankings

Kimber at Shilling Me Softly is reporting that the USNWR will adjust the information presented about its law school rankings to give a better portrait of the information colleges submit to them (i.e. by providing more information to put employment numbers in context, not any change to the methodology) based on articulated criticism from Law School Transparency.

Even though I don't like the concept of the rankings generally, I realize they do have an effect. I obviously think this is good news; isn't anything that presents a more honest picture of the legal profession?

But I wanted to talk more about USNRW in general. I found this article here, about a recent study of which USNWR was a partner that looked at the nature of college rankings (the article is part 2 of a 3-part series:

3. Do the U.S. News rankings "put pressure on institutions to invest in strategies and practices primarily for the purpose of maintaining or strengthening position in the rankings," either consistently or occasionally? An overwhelming majority (95.1 percent) of NACAC's members at both colleges and high schools believe that "Yes, colleges either occasionally or consistently invest in strategies and policies to improve in the rankings."
...
4. Does your school or institution make programmatic changes because of rankings? The report concluded that 54.1 percent of NACAC's members representing colleges reported that their particular institutions do not make any programmatic changes based on the ranking. However, it said that 7.6 percent say that their school consistently makes changes and 38.4 percent say that their schools make changes occasionally because of the rankings.

Although this is for the undergraduate sector, I strongly suspect that it applies equally (or greater) to law schools, and I find the timing of these revelations significant.

Notice anything curious about questions 3 and 4 when put together? Question 3 asked if schools in the generic sense put in policies to improve their USNWR rank. Question 4 asked members if their institution in particular did it (although I'm not sure what they mean by "programmatic" change and that seems like a question flaw; under a liberal definition of the word, it would mean anything, but people might interpret it narrowly).

In any event, I find the disparity between 3 and 4 interesting. 95% of respondents believe schools make changes, but only 46% of those reporting say their own school does it. Assuming no one thought they were the only school in the country that did it, that's a hypocrisy/sanctimonious rate of around 49%, i.e., those who thought other schools put in programs with the ratings in mind, but their school did not.

That's really high and USNWR isn't dumb. Although normally I'm cynical about such things, there's a part of me that honestly believes USNWR is getting the results back from this survey (and maybe others) and is realizing how widespread and destructive to academia their ratings have become. In the past few decades, USNWR has gone from being a news magazine to being a journalistic outpost whose sole practical purpose to most people anymore is to put out these silly rankings. And when someone's bread and butter may be tainted - and the above discrepancies show the college administrators have no qualms lying about their actions or their motives - it's usually wise to do something about it and find ways to correct the problem.

In the past few years, they've gone entirely online and faced major criticism from college presidents for their rankings. Given the results of both those developments, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were actually trying to take care of their rankings and nip accurate criticism - such as LST's that the information presented was not giving a complete picture - in the bud to maintain relevant.