Magnificent post. Thanks for digging this out. bh.

I agree wholeheartedly. One dean who decidedly did not do this, however, was my former dean at UNLV, Dick Morgan. He had good news as UNLV made it back to the second tier of the U.S. News rankings, but he made the same comments he always makes about the rankings. In a local newspaper story, he said "This stuff is so unscientific, so arbitrary." Commenting on the school's shifting ranks from 82 to 90 to third tier and then back to the second tier, Morgan said "The school hasn't changed materially in those times." The full story is here: http://www.lvrj.com/news/6808032.html.

Thanks, Bill and Bob. I especially appreciate Dean Morgan's remarks. I was looking for the dean who had the guts to say that in the face of positive ranking news. Thanks for highlighting him.

Considering that most sources (other than the school websites and glossy handouts at law fairs) state that the schools themselves spend about 5 minutes per candidate reviewing non-numerical aspects of the candidate's file, it's more than a little disingenuous for those schools to rail against a popular numerical index for their businesses that is hardly more flawed than the LSAT or undergraduate GPA (especially given the .7 spread between the medians at various undergraduate schools.)

There's also a secondary issue of a lack of viable alternatives -- not to mention that, no matter how slippery it is to calculate, many candidates are actually very interested in the national reputation of potential schools (as few 22 year olds are willing to commit to spending the rest of their lives in Columbus, Ohio, or Waco, Texas.)

I mean, I'm not very surprised at schools trying to play both sides of the issue -- I do wish they'd make better and less self-serving arguments when they do make one of their stands, but then, I'm an idealistic applicant still.

Actually, Sarah, Columbus is a great city. Lots of people move here and stay because they like it here. I agree that perhaps few young people "commit" to living here, but that's true of almost anywhere.
As one commentator once said, in regard to the attitude expressed among the coastal elites concerning the Midwest: "Their disdain is our salvation."

Bravo, Gordon! I've linked to your post on my site: http://nancyrapoport.blogspot.com/2007/04/most-numbers-dont-speak-for-themselves.html. At best, the specialty rankings are less susceptible to gaming, because (theoretically) there's peer-to-peer voting; on the other hand, that peer-to-peer voting can be dangerous, as peers try to game each other on the way up.

Dick Morgan's reaction to this year's rankings is one of the many reasons that he's been a great dean.

I see no conflict here. One can recognize that the rankings system is unscientific and arbitrary, yet still be pleased at a good ranking from that system.

In other words: "the test is rigged, and we did well, hooray" is not inconsistent.

Great post! It's too bad that future lawyers aren't savvy enough to see past the rankings in applying, and that deans who officially deplore the rankings, unofficially praise the rankings. A professor at my law school (a top 35 according to USNews) has said that he sees no difference in the students at my law school than students at HLS where he received his degree. Striking. And bravo to UNLV's (my hometown school) dean for seeing being brave enough to not tout the rankings.

Note to deans: you cannot have it both ways. You can't claim to be oppressed by the rankings and simultaneously celebrate them.
Sure they can. They're lawyers.
Even I, a non-lawyer, can do it. "Even the flawed USN&WR ranks us as #17 in the country. And a more accurate, less biased survey would rate us as #2."

I'd advise some sympathy for the deans.

Perhaps they're like Captain Renault and don't have an ounce of actual hypocrisy -- they simply take the imperfect world (their rankings, and their gambling winnings) as they find them. Or, as others have noted, perhaps they take a more nuanced view that permits both celebration and condemnation of the rankings at the same time.

But note that if there must be some hypocrisy we still haven't determined which statement was false. Perhaps some deans think that, on the whole, the US News ranks carry real weight, that they measure some real aspects of excellence, and that across large numbers they are pretty close approximations of what just about every reasonable person would conclude about the schools. Perhaps those deans signed the letter just to close ranks in support of their guild. Perhaps they signed it just to get along with their fellow deans or to please the faculty. Is it really the case that all the deans who signed that letter could testify truthfully while hooked up to a lie detector that they see no validity in the US News approach and in its rankings?

Hypocricy is not the relevant criterion here. Law school deans are not appointed to develop accurate ranking criteria or to strive for some kind of philosophical honesty in regard to the comparative quality of law schools. They're appointed to bring in money and students in the somewhat more than optimistic hope that more money and better students will yield a higher quality law school offering a better legal education and pumping out more capable and conscientious attorneys to the overall betterment of society. The fact that this is sheer nonsense can't really be blamed on the deans.

In the meantime, any dean whose law school moves up a significant step in legal academia's most popular and widely read rating system who doesn't jump all over that fact for marketing purposes is an utter fool and should be fired immediately for complete incompetence.

Seriously, the fact that Nielsen ratings, or government sponsored crash tests, or SAT scores are demonstrably imperfect doesn't mean that we expect TV networks, auto makers and college students to keep quiet about high scores in these rankings, let alone disparage the ranking systems for their imperfections.

Hypocricy in PR and salesmanship...my God, what is this world coming to...?