The Journal has a story on the consideration U.S. News is giving to counting entering part-time students along with full-time students. For what it's worth, I think the problem is with law schools that have started bogus part-time day programs to admit students who don't otherwise have the proper credentials. Long established part-time evening programs, like George Mason's, tend to have students with a bit weaker academic credentials than their full-time counterparts, but with vastly more real-world experience. I've had, for example, evening students in their 40s and 50s who have successfully built multi-million dollar businesses. Does it make sense to judge them based on their undergraduate GPA from twenty years earlier?

I was also struck but this line: "Mr. Morse of U.S. News says the magazine will run tests of how the change would play out in rankings, and then decide in January." If the change is methodologically valid (or not), it shouldn't matter "how the change would play out in rankings." It's bizarre to first decide what you think the rankings should look like, and then create (or retain) criteria to meet that preconceived notion.

What I'd like to see is a separate ranking of part-time programs, especially given that most part-timers are working professionals who are choosing among part-time programs, and do not even consider full-time admissions. Not only would this provide very useful information to such students, but schools that, say, are revealed to have nine part-time day students out of a class of 200, with an LSAT 10 points below their full-time median, will be called out for abusing the system.

UPDATE: TAXPROF has links to much more commentary.