Law schools at Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley have pulled out of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings over concerns that the system is biased against equity programs.
It seems unlikely that the system is biased against equity programs or that the rankings even consider equity programs, but if “equity programs” means what I think it does, it means that the schools reject accomplished candidates who are White, Asian or Jewish in favor of less accomplished candidates who are not White, Asian or Jewish.
That would show up indirectly in rankings if the rankings look, as I’m sure they do, at LSAT scores, GPA and other indications of merit.
It seems like one of two things can happen as a result of equity programs. One is that the schools teach classes to the level of the students, so if you reduce the qualifications of the students, you teach classes at a correspondingly lower level of rigor.
The second and more likely outcome is that the schools teach the classes as they always have and the “equity” admits drop out because they’re not able to compete against students who are more qualified and more prepared to succeed than they are.
If you want to see the poor remain poor, generation after generation, just keep the standards low in their schools and make excuses for their academic shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don’t congratulate yourself on your compassion.