I know it's not exactly "legal" news, but U.S. News and World Report just released their rankings of the top 200 Colleges and Universities in the World.

Thanks to Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, I'm bringing the information to you instead of enjoying the company of my wife, or friends, or dog, or PS3.

Here are the T-14 top 10 schools on the list:

1. Harvard

2. Yale

3. Cambridge [Harvard's on here twice. WooHoo!]

4. Oxford

5. Cal Tech

6. Imperial College London

7. University College London

8. University of Chicago

9. MIT

10. Columbia

The highest ranked non-U.S., non-U.K. school on the list is the 16th ranked Australian National University. University of Tokyo clocks in at 19, and McGill is 20th.

To be honest, I have no earthly idea how you compare Boston University (ranked 46) against Trinity College Dublin (ranked 49th), but that's why the U.S. News people get the big bucks I guess (assuming of course that U.S. News still pays people).

U.S. News Top 200 Colleges & Universities in the World [TaxProf Blog]
World's Best Colleges and Universities: Top 200 [U.S. News]

Earlier: Top Law Schools Based On Top Lawyers
Princeton Review Ranks Law Schools Too

While we have been focusing on associate layoffs, law schools continue to ruin the U.S. News Law School Rankings.

Yesterday we learned that Alabama Law School is offering people $20 worth of iTunes cash to simply apply to Alabama. How does this impact that U.S. News rankings? Because the magazine counts acceptance rate as part of its methodology. The more students you turn away, the better your school looks.

Meanwhile, TaxProf Blog reports on a dangerous precedent being set at Baylor University. Baylor is now paying students to retake the SAT. This strategy could also be used to game the LSAT now that the ABA requires schools to report the highest LSAT score students receive. We know how "competitive" those Baylor kids are but getting an improved test score through cash incentives after you've already matriculated looks a lot like cheating.

We have also extensively covered the raft of silly programs that obviate the need for the LSAT altogether, so long as the student hits a desired GPA benchmark.

Putting it all together after the jump.

In the interest of completeness, here are a few quick postscripts to stories that we previously covered in these pages, but didn't get around to mentioning during the craziness of last week. They come from the National Law Journal and/or the WSJ Law Blog.

1. Judge Robert Somma: The cross-dressing former bankruptcy judge (at right), who resigned from the bench after a drunk driving arrest, has joined the bankruptcy practice of Posternak Blankstein & Lund, a midsize firm based in Boston, as senior counsel. [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

2. American Justice School of Law: This defunct Kentucky law school, which in 2007 was hit with a class action filed by some of its students, has filed for bankruptcy. [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

3. L'Affaire Kozinski: The panel of federal judges from the Third Circuit investigating Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (at right) has retained Robert Heim, head of litigation at Dechert, to oversee the probe (which will be staffed by lawyers from Dechert and Morgan Lewis & Bockius). [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

4. University of Michigan's Wolverine Scholars Program: Sarah Zearfoss, dean of admissions at UM Law, has defended the program against allegations that it's an attempt to game the U.S. News rankings. She pointed out that the program is small, likely to result in the admission of just five to ten students (out of a class of 360), and that very few UM undergrads (about 200) would even be eligible for it. [WSJ Law Blog]

Honestly, we are not trying to pile on Michigan. We know how obsessed some of their students are with their U.S. News law school ranking. But perhaps the law school administration has taken things too far in their attempt to make Michigan the "champions of the west."

From TaxProf Blog:

Michigan's new Wolverine Scholars Program -- in which [University of] Michigan undergrads with a minimum 3.80 GPA are admitted to Michigan Law School if they agree to not take the LSAT. The rankings benefit is that there is no LSAT score to report to U.S. News, while the minimum 3.80 GPA will boost Michigan's median 3.64 GPA, which counts 10% in U.S. News' methodology.

Look Michigan, if you are going to try to rig something, at least have the decency to do it under the cover of darkness.

To a UM college student with a 3.8, the Wolverine Scholars Program looks like an interesting example of game theory. But to the rest of us, it looks a straight bribe. It's like Michigan Law School is saying: "Please, please, please don't take the LSAT. Because if you get a 167 we probably have to accept you anyway. And if you get a 175 you will better deal us for a lobster dinner."

The Big Ten strikes back, after the jump.

Law school deans continue to show the intellectual backbone of phytoplankton when faced with the big fish over at U.S. News & World Report. As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning (subscription), U.S. News is considering changing their law school rankings formula, and the wailing has already begun.

According to the report, U.S. News is considering counting the LSAT scores and GPAs of part-time students. Some law schools admit under performing students into their part-time programs; that way they can keep the tuition dollars flowing in, without jeopardizing their precious place in the rankings.

Brian Leiter sounded the alarm over this proposed change nearly two months ago (and we also covered it back then). Leiter notes that the proposed change could harm the mission of legal education:

For many, probably most, part-time programs serve older, working students, who might not have time for fancy LSAT prep courses, but who bring levels of dedication, seriousness, and pertinent experience that enrich legal education and the legal profession.

There are any number of reasons for law schools to admit, on a part-time basis, students who are unable to meet grade and test score cut-offs. And there are any number of reasons for U.S. News not to care in the slightest.

There is an interesting debate to be had on whether part-time programs enhance the quality of legal education or the legal profession. Instead, we're getting marginal law schools trying to game a method of data collection, while a magazine tries to punish the offenders.

It's just another indication that law school can be reduced to a couple of episodes of Law & Order.

Law School Rankings Reviewed to Deter 'Gaming' [WSJ (subscription) via WSJ Law Blog]
Proposed Changes to US News Ranking Methodology [Leiter's Law School Reports]

We suspect that law school deans will bitch about the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings no matter what. But it's still interesting, and perhaps encouraging, to learn that the magazine is contemplating some tweaks to its ranking methodology. From rankings czar Robert Morse:

The first idea is that U.S. News should count both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for median LSAT scores and median undergraduate grade-point averages in calculating the school's ranking. U.S. News's current law school ranking methodology counts only full-time entering student data. Many people have told us that some law schools operate part-time J.D. programs for the purpose of enrolling students who have far lower LSAT and undergrad GPAs than the students admitted to the full-time program in order to boost their admission data reported to U.S. News and the ABA. In other words, many contend that these aren't truly separate part-time programs but merely a vehicle to raise a law school's LSAT and undergrad GPA for its U.S. News ranking....

Another idea was proposed in the 1998 report "The Validity of the U.S. News and World Report Rankings of ABA Law Schools" commissioned by the Association of American Law Schools. The proposal calls for U.S. News to compute our bar passage rate component (school's bar pass rate/jurisdiction's bar passage rate) using only the data of first-time takers who are graduates of American Bar Association-accredited schools. Currently, our "jurisdiction's bar passage rate" uses the rate of all first-time test takers from a state regardless of the ABA accreditation of their law schools. This distinction is perhaps most meaningful for the state of California, which has a large number of non-ABA-accredited schools....

So, folks, whaddya think? To kick off the discussion, check out Professor Christine Hurt's views -- she seems critical of proposed change #1 -- over at Conglomerate.

Changing the Law School Ranking Formula [Morse Code /2U.S. News & World Report]
Proposed Change in USNWR Ranking Methodology [Conglomerate via TaxProf Blog]