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Rankings Report folks for the last three years. The error misreported the level of total student debt by excluding a category of loans from the figure.
Hey, they could’ve just pulled out of the rankings like the top schools and no one would be the wiser, so kudos for being upfront about it! It’s what all the cool kids are doing.
How far off was the school anyway?
The misreport on this metric was substantial. The corrected debt numbers are the following: For 2019, the correct average debt number was $98,695, and the incorrect reported number was $62,583. For 2020, the correct average debt number was $86,023, and the incorrect reported number was $56,898. For 2021, last year, the correct average debt number was $85,956, and the incorrect reported number was $60,088. While these numbers were misreported to US News, they were never directly marketed to applicants by the Law School. We also remain a lower debt law school, and our corrected debt number for 2021 is still well below the national average for debt and a lower number than all but one of the other law schools in this state reporting average debt to US News.
That’s… quite a bit. But as the letter says, the school never used these numbers in marketing and the error didn’t make much of a dent in the rankings because debt is a tiny component in the USNWR methodology.
Which is why we’ve shown little patience for the elite schools scurrying to exit the rankings. The departing schools offered a lot of hand-wringing that treating financial aid as a disfavored stat set a disincentive to admitting students who need loans. Which is kind of like the Hunger Games demanding credit for offering a life-changing opportunity to 24 lucky kids.
Wealthy people are called the 1% for a reason — law schools aren’t able to fill seats with millionaires just to avoid a minuscule hit to their ranking. While spending on grants and tuition waivers weighs less in the existing methodology than other per student spending, it’s still a positive. The only negative is the debt figure that jacks up when the school signs students up for a bunch of loans. That’s what the schools don’t want out there.
In any event, Texas Tech has now squared things away with U.S. News and we’ll find out how that impacts the rankings in a few months.
Full memo on the next page…
Law Schools, Rankings, Texas Tech University School of Law, US News and World Report
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* All right everyone. Let’s use our Dr. Evil voices: frivolous lawsuit earns Donald Trump sanction of… one MILLION dollars! Or $937K at least. [NY Times]
* If he’s interested in pushing his luck, his lawsuit against his niece is still going. [Courthouse News Service]
* South Texas Law Houston and Roger Williams Law have both withdrawn support for the USNWR rankings. Without that precious data, how will U.S. News know to keep placing them in the bottom tier? [Law.com]
* Musk likely to take the stand today in Tesla trial. Facing questions from people he can’t suspend? It’s a whole new world out there. [Reuters]
* The trifecta of going hardcore anti-reproductive freedom AND trafficking in rape apologist tropes (women’s testimony means “unsupported”) AND demanding the Court’s 1A & 2A rules be suspended solely for right-wing justices in the same column? Chef’s kiss. [Washington Post]
* And Orrick will merge with Buckley. [Bloomberg]
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Texas Tech Law School Admits U.S. News Ranking Reporting Error … – Above the Law
