AIRAN SCRUBY
News Editor
Pepperdine’s School of Law fell 10 places in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings for accredited law schools nationwide, but School of Law officials are attributing losing ground to a change in the report’s methods for evaluation.
Pepperdine School of Law is now ranked 87th overall, down from 77th last year.
The school was ranked against 180 other accredited law schools. Accreditation is earned through the American Bar Association.
Positive changes in subcategories were also recorded for Pepperdine School of Law, and the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution is ranked first in the country, ahead of Harvard Stanford, and Georgetown, according to the letter sent by Starr.
Pepperdine’s Graziadio School for Business and Management achieved a gain in rankings this year for its Fully Employed MBA program. The school had fallen in 2005, losing its place in the rankings after spending 2004 at 22nd in the nation. This year, they have returned to the list as 30th in the country.
“We are pleased to learn that our Fully Employed MBA program now joins our Full-time MBA program in recognition by the prestigious U.S. News &World Report,” said Linda A. Livingstone, dean of the Graziadio School, in an e-mail statement.
“We know that our alumni and students highly value rankings, so we are thrilled to learn that our full-time MBA program was ranked among the top programs in the nation,” Emily Garcia, director of Public Relations for Graziadio said.
The overall rank for Graziadio School for Business and Management is 86th in the nation. Though this was a fall from 2005 (when the school was ranked 79th), but business school officials remained positive.
“While much of what makes Pepperdine unique and special is not measure by these rankings, we do have to deal with the realities of the marketplace, and these rankings to matter to many people,” School of Law Dean Kenneth Starr said in a letter to alumni of the School of Law.
Starr wrote that the category, which measures employment nine months after graduation, did not take into account those students not seeking work because they were studying to pass the Bar Exam.
Rick Cupp, associate dean for Research at the School of Law, said in an e-mail that students considering law school should not rely on rankings to decide where they would attend.
“Applicants and employers would be better served by doing their homework and really learning about law schools’ strengths and weaknesses rather than relying on arbitrary and manipulable rankings,” Cupp said.
Norm Fischer, associate vice president of Planning, Assessment and Institutional Research, said the rankings are difficult to evaluate because they are multifaceted, and also reliant on changes at other law schools around the country.
Fischer said it was also notable that last year the law school was tied with six other schools for 77th place, so any fall would have meant falling by six places.
In most categories used in evaluation, the school rose in ranking, but was forced to endure the heavy cost of a lack of student employment soon after graduation.
Pepperdine School of Law has been ranked as a second-tier school (top 100) for the past three years.
04-16-2006
