The S.J. Quinney College of Law was ranked as the 51st best law school in the country this year, making one of the highest jumps in this year’s national rankings compared with other graduate programs at the U.
The 2009 report compiled by U.S. News and World Report ranks the nation’s best graduate programs. The College of Law moved up six slots from its ranking last year while other colleges at the U made smaller gains or moved down in the rankings.
Hiram Chodosh, dean of the College of Law, said several factors can be attributed to the jump in this year’s ranking, such as achieving a student/faculty ratio below 10 to 1, increasing career placement and a boost in peer and professional reputation rankings.
Although the college is seeing more competitive applicants than in past years, some factors that officials at the college have little control over can keep it from moving even higher in the future. The report looks at the school of law’s total annual budget but doesn’t take into account how effectively the money is spent, Chodosh said.
“They take the annual budget and divide it by each student,” he said. “This favors private schools that have large budgets regardless of how efficiently that budget is spent.”
The College of Law has been ranked in the top tier of law schools every year since the rankings began.
“Rankings are of instrumental importance as a rough proxy of value used by applicants, peers, donors and employers,” Chodosh said in a written statement. “However, at the same time, rankings do not shape our institutional values and commitments.”
The new rankings place the School of Medicine at 50th in the nation for research, down one slot from last year. But the school was also moved up 14 spots to rank 31st for primary care, 8th best for nursing-midwifery, 19th for physical therapy and 4th for its physician assistant program.
“We have a system in the state of Utah that values primary care,” said David Bjorkman, dean of the School of Medicine. “Reputation plays a big role.”
Bjorkman said the School of Medicine at the U might not be as large as other universities’, but it is very efficient for its size.
“We do really well with our small faculty in research,” he said. “Part of our ranking also has to do with the number of people going into family medicine, and our physicians assistance program has been recognized for excellence for years.”
Although the U is ranked 28 times — far more than any other school in the state — some programs stayed at the same rank or moved down.
The College of Education and the College of Engineering moved down in the national rankings. Education was ranked 69th last year but went down to 73rd in current rankings. Engineering was ranked 55th last year and lost ground to be ranked 59th this year.
A complete list of rankings can be found at www.usnews.com.