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April 18, 2006

UH Law Center Dean Rapoport resigns

dean rapaport.jpgUniversity of Houston Law Center Dean Nancy Rapoport resigned yesterday. This Chronicle article on the resignation suggests that the resignation was prompted by a stormy meeting last week in which the Dean was criticized by students and faculty for, among other things, a drop by the UH Law Center of almost 20 places (from 50 to 69) over the past four years in U.S. News & World Report rankings of U.S. law schools. Christine Hurt over at Conglomerate provides perspective on Dean Rapoport's tenure at UH.

I do not know the reasons for Dean Rapoport's resignation, but if it is truly a result of criticism over the drop in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, then the critics ought to be ashamed of themselves. True experts in law school evaluation have long considered the U.S. News rankings as highly defective and misleading. University of Texas Law Professor Brian Leiter, who authors a much more well-reasoned and objective ranking of U.S. law schools than the U.S. News rankings, currently ranks the UH Law Center faculty as the second-best of Texas law schools (behind only UT) and better than the faculties of the law schools at SMU and Baylor, both of which are ranked higher than UH in the U.S. News rankings.

Posted by Tom at April 18, 2006 05:10 AM

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Comments

Tom,

I don't think the U.S. News rankings are the real reason, though I'm sure that didn't help. It may be that relations between dean and faculty were at times frosty.

Posted by: TP at April 18, 2006 07:33 AM

There was indeed considerable student anger at the USNWR issue, which I agree is stupid. The only legitimate complaint to be made is the officially abysmal employment rate, which while inflated for the record size of my own class of 2005, is really, really poor.

I understand the faculty did have other issues with her, although the only one I know of was the contentious decision to change the 1L curriculum a couple of years ago to include a second semester elective. Some of the losing faculty really hated the idea.

Posted by: Dylan at April 18, 2006 09:41 AM

Just fyi, it's "Rapoport." Not "Rapaport."

Posted by: Claire at April 18, 2006 02:14 PM

Given the emphasis that the US News ranking place on a school's reputation among attorneys and judges, and the inconsistant quality of the research and writing abilitites of the graduates that the UH turns out,