According to Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, Forbes magazine is planning to issue a new set of law school rankings to compete with the ubiquitous US News rankings. It is a good thing that a prominent publication is going to create a competing ranking system. The US News rankings have many well-known flaws, such as those I described in this post.
The US News rankings do provide some valuable information and certainly aren’t completely worthless. But this market is long overdue for some additional competition.
Caron’s post includes Forbes’ ranking of the top 50 undergraduate colleges. The list is interesting. But there is one glaring error: My alma mater, Amherst College, is ranked No. 3, behind traditional rival Williams which is ranked No. 1. Any ranking methodology that ranks the Fairest College lower than the Purple Cows must have a serious flaw somewhere. Hopefully, the Forbes law school rankings will be better-designed.