US News and a Change in the Formula for Law School Rankings: Part Time v. Full Time Students (Part 2)

We occasionally examine issues associated with law school rankings (for a paper on the impact of law blogging and rankings can be found here). We are examining the impact of a proposal put out by US News to alter the formula for determining the median LSAT and GPA (which provide 22.5% of a law school's ranking). The magazine proposes that medians be calculated based not on full time students but all students, including part time.

In assessing the impact of this possible change, we took a look at the law schools that have part time divisions. The data is reported to the ABA and is publicly available. The ABA list contains 196 accredited law schools (although US News says the rankings include only 184 law schools). Of that number, 90 or slightly less than half have a part time division. The schools with part time divisions?

• Akron, Alabama, American, Arkansas (Little Rock), Cleveland State, Baltimore, Barry, Brooklyn, California Western, Capital, Cardozo, Case Western, Catholic (DC), Chapman, Charleston, Chicago-Kent, Cleveland State, Connecticut, Denver, DePaul, Detroit-Mercy, Duquesne, Thomas Goode Jones (Faulkner), Florida A&M, Florida International, Fordham, George Mason, George Washington, Georgetown, Georgia State, Golden Gate, Hamline, Hofstra, Houston, Indiana (Indianapolis), Inter American, John Marshall, La Verne, Lewis & Clark, Louisville, Loyola (Marymount), Loyola (Chicago), Loyola (New Orleans), Marquette, Maryland, Michigan State, Nevada, New England, NY Law, North Carolina Central, Northern Kentucky, Nova, Oklahoma City, Pace, McGeorge, Penn State (Dickinson), Phoenix, Catholic (PR), Puerto Rico, Quinnipiac, Rutgers (Camden), Rutgers (Newark), St. Johns, St. Louis, St. Mary’s, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Seattle, Seton Hall, SMU, South Texas, Southern University, Southwestern, Stetson, Suffolk, Temple, Texas Wesleyan, Cooley, Thomas Jefferson, Toledo, Touro, Tulsa, Valparaiso, Wayne State, Western New England, Western State, Whittier, Widener, William Mitchell

Before we do a rough assessment of the likely impact of the change in the US New formula on these schools, we offer a number of general observations.  First, we omitted from the list Creighton, Missouri (KC), and Hawaii, each with only 11 students, and a host of schools that showed less than 10 part time students (Boston College, Drake, Florida Coastal, Memphis, Northern Illinois, Regent, Richmond and South Dakota), but left in Tulsa with 16.

Part time divisions are, interestingly, a second and fourth tier phenomena.  In the top 25 (based on the most current US News rankings), only two law schools have part time divisions:  Georgetown and George Washington.  In the next 25, there are seven schools with part time divisions, Alabama, American, Connecticut, Fordham, George Mason, Maryland and SMU.  

Of the remaining top 100, however, more than half, or 29 law schools have part time divisions.  Of the 37 schools in the third tier, 15 have part time divisions, while 28 of the 43 schools in the 4th tier have them.  In addition, nine are not ranked (Charleston, Jones, Florida A&M, Inter American, La Verne, Phoenix, Catholic - Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, and Western State). 

Which schools took in the largest part time classes last year?  Cooley by far (1273), followed by Michigan State (201), Suffolk (199), Brooklyn (187), Fordham (161), Seton Hall (151), and Fordham (161).  

In the next post, we will look at the possible impact of the proposed change by US News.

For the law schools in the top 100, we have the data on the differences in the median LSAT scores for full and part time programs and the number of students as a percentage of the day division that each part time program accepts.  If you want a the data, it will be sent gratis to anyone who writes a comment on this series and asks for the data.  

Comments

[Frank Miley]

Thanks for your work on the impact of the proposed change in the formula for law school rankings. At William Mitchell we have been trying to determine the impact this will have on our school,if any. I would appreciate seeing your data.
Frank Miley, VP Administration

[Loretta DeLoggio]

As I reported at http://www.deloggio.com/newweb/news.htm, I have calculated the possible change in rankings for every school whose gpa and LSAT score for all students differs from the same data for full-time students. I found that the schools most likely to suffer are those whose admission philosophy for the part-time is different from the full-time program. I posted comments to Mr. Morse's proposal at http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2008/6/index.html; my comment is # 62.

I did not post all my data, as I normally do, because there is no way to correlate changes in one variable with changes in overall US News ranking. If any school would like to know my opinion of the effect on their ranking, they should feel free to contact me at deloggio@mindspring.com.

Incidentally, I believe the correlation of part-time programs to rankings is invalid. I have found that part-time programs correlate with urban areas; since geographic attractiveness controls a school’s selectivity, schools in more attractive urban locales tend to occupy the higher end of any segment of schools.