Harvard Medical School dumps US News rankings following law school exodus
Jeremiah Poff
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The dean of Harvard Medical School announced Tuesday that the school would no longer participate in the U.S. News and World Report rankings less than two months after multiple law schools across the country did the same.
In a letter to the school’s community, Dean George Daley said that the prestigious Ivy League medical school would no longer submit data to the publication that has annually ranked colleges and universities for quality.
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“As unintended consequences, rankings create perverse incentives for institutions to report misleading or inaccurate data, set policies to boost rankings rather than nobler objectives, or divert financial aid from students with financial need to high-scoring students with means in order to maximize ranking criteria,” Daley said in the letter. “Ultimately, the suitability of any particular medical school for any given student is too complex, nuanced, and individualized to be served by a rigid ranked list, no matter the methodology.”
Harvard Medical School’s decision to ditch the rankings comes weeks after several law schools, including Harvard Law School, said they would no longer participate in the rankings, with some calling the methodology used to calculate the rankings “flawed.”
In his letter, Daley called the law school’s actions “courageous and bold” and said it compelled him to pull the plug on the medical school’s participation, which he said he had been contemplating for six years.
“What matters most to me as dean, alumnus, and faculty member is not a #1 ranking, but the quality and richness of the educational experience we provide at Harvard Medical School that encourages personal growth and lifelong learning,” he said.
Earlier this month, U.S. News announced it would overhaul the criteria and methodology used to calculate the rankings following the mass exodus.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of the medical watchdog group Do No Harm, slammed Harvard’s decision to no longer participate in the rankings because it interfered with the school’s ability to further its diversity and affirmative action goals.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“The U.S. News and World Report magazine ranking system for medical schools has long presented a problem for prestigious institutions like Harvard and Penn, where I used to teach,” Goldfarb said. “These medical schools desperately want to admit more students based on race, which they’ve done by lowering standards and admitting some students who didn’t take the MCAT. They want to admit more, but the U.S. News Rankings won’t let them without rightly penalizing their ranking. Now Harvard medical school can admit whoever it wants, on whatever standards it wants, and it can still claim to be #1. Harvard just cancelled ranking systems.”