Harvard Medical School announces withdrawal from U.S. News & World Report rankings - The Hill

Harvard University Medical School is withdrawing from U.S. News & World Report’s yearly rankings of apical aesculapian schools successful the state based connected “philosophical” issues with them. 

Dean George Daley said successful a message to members of the aesculapian schoolhouse assemblage connected Tuesday that helium recognizes the issues acquisition leaders person had with the methodology that the rankings usage to measure schools, but the determination is based connected the “principled content that rankings cannot meaningfully bespeak the precocious aspirations for acquisition excellence, postgraduate preparedness, and compassionate and equitable diligent attraction that we strive to foster successful our aesculapian acquisition programs.” 

He said rankings make “perverse” incentives for world institutions to study misleading oregon inaccurate data, acceptable policies designed to rise their rankings alternatively of different objectives and divert fiscal assistance toward high-performing students alternatively of those with a fiscal need. 

“Ultimately, the suitability of immoderate peculiar aesculapian schoolhouse for immoderate fixed pupil is excessively complex, nuanced, and individualized to beryllium served by a rigid ranked list, nary substance the methodology,” Daley said. 

The determination comes arsenic U.S. News & World Report has faced disapproval from respective world institutions, including Harvard Law School, implicit its strategy of ranking universities’ programs. 

Harvard and Yale’s instrumentality schools some announced successful November that they would extremity their information successful the rankings. They attacked the rankings’ methodology, noting that it includes however overmuch indebtedness students have, and said it disincentivizes providing need-based fiscal aid.

A fewer different instrumentality schools person joined them successful withdrawing from the rankings.

U.S. News said earlier this period that it volition marque changes to however it ranks instrumentality schools, including placing little accent connected adjacent appraisal reviews and much connected schools offering fellowships to students pursuing nationalist service. 

U.S. News Executive Chairman and CEO Eric Gertler has said the rankings are intended to assistance students marque the “best decision” for wherever to be instrumentality school. 

But Daley said his precedence is not to person a apical ranking but to absorption connected the “quality and richness of the acquisition experience” astatine the aesculapian school, encouraging idiosyncratic maturation and “lifelong learning.” 

He said the “bold and courageous” moves from the dean of Harvard’s instrumentality schoolhouse and adjacent instrumentality schools led him to instrumentality this enactment is ending the aesculapian school’s information with the rankings. 

He said the schoolhouse volition proceed to publically stock cardinal accusation astir itself connected its admissions website successful the involvement of transparency and accountability. He noted that applicants tin comparison schools’ information successful a “raw, unweighted form” connected the Association of American Medical Colleges website. 

“We spot these resources volition beryllium invaluable for students arsenic they marque thoughtful and meaningful decisions astir which aesculapian schoolhouse is the champion acceptable for them,” Daley said.