AU's School of Public Affairs was ranked No. 10 overall in the nation, while the Washington College of Law was ranked second in clinical training and sixth in international law, according to the U.S. News and World Report new rankings.
However, while the WCL is pleased with its improvement in ranking, WCL Dean Claudio Grossman has joined with other law school deans to say that rankings like the U.S. Report's undermine the reputation of schools by excluding factors such as diversity.
The new survey ranks America's best graduate programs and further breaks down the rankings by specialty. More than 1,000 graduate programs and nearly 9,100 academics in the areas of business, education, engineering, law and medicine were surveyed in fall 2003. The results were based on expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students.
"This puts [AU] in a good spot," AU spokeswoman Maralee Csellar said. "These are all the advantages that students have in our backyard [with] our city of D.C. and the federal government."
SPA tied at No. 10 with George Washington University but ranked above other area schools, including Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University and George Mason University. Top universities included Syracuse in first place and Harvard in second.
The school also ranked third in its Criminal Justice Policy and Management program and in the top 25 with its programs for Public Policy and Social Policy. It also ranked No. 8 in Public Management Administration.
SPA Dean William Leogrande is pleased about the school's ranking and that peers hold AU's individual programs in high regard.
"We have made significant strides in recent years, building the quality of our programs, attracting exceptional faculty, and recruiting an increasingly talented student body," Leogrande said in a statement. "This national recognition is a measure of our success, and the credit for its belongs to the faculty and staff who continue to do a fantastic job delivering the best public policy programs in the nation's capital."
An example of why AU ranked so highly is that many of the school's graduate students have received the prestigious presidential management internship, a two-year paid internship, according to Csellar.
The WCL ranked No. 56 overall among 177 law schools. Yale, Harvard and Stanford universities ranked in the top third.
Its Clinical Training program ranked second in between G.W. in first and New York University in third and its international law program ranked sixth in the nation. Its intellectual property program was also nationally ranked.
"Statistics reported in the survey show that the quality of our students has continued to improve," Grossman, the WCL Dean, said in a statement.
Grossman accounts the improvement of a lower faculty to student ratio. He also points out that WCL has the fourteenth-lowest student/faculty ratio.
"The academic and professional reputation of WCL continues to thrive as well, placing WCL well within the top 50 schools in the nation in both categories," Grossman said. "Indeed we have been in the top 50 schools in academic reputation for the last several years."
However, Grossman signed a letter with other law school deans in the nation who want "to educate the public about the shortcomings of commercial surveys like the U.S. Report's that reduce the complex issues of education quality to a rank-ordered list."
"U.S. News' methodology has been widely criticized because of its subjective nature and its failure to reflect important factors that we value highly," Grossman said. "[The Report] should take into account diversity because that [is one factor that guides policy.]"
Other factors, Grossman said, include diversity of both faculty and student body, class size, level of student satisfaction, program intitatives and depth of curricular offerings, and "the engagement of faculty and students in an active and creative intellectual community."
Grossman also said that the WCL's Diversity Index ranking which is not a factor in the U.S. News' numerical ranking of schools, rose from 27 to 19. Only 6 schools that ranked ahead of WCL had better diversity index, he said.
"I think that surveys could be valuable in one element, but students should take in account other elements," said Grossman, who said WCL will continue its commitments to such things as diversity. "[However,] we want to alert others and our community in the short comings [of the ranking]. [These rankings] however should not guide education policy"
