The University of Pittsburgh said Friday it will withdraw from participating in the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, joining a revolt now spreading nationally among public and private schools over the rankings’ methodology.

The U.S. News Best Law Schools ranking system “is systematically flawed and harmful to both legal education and the legal profession,” interim Pitt Law dean Haider Ala Hamoudi said in a statement obtained by the Tribune-Review.

“Some aspects of the U.S. News rankings are inconsistent with Pitt Law’s mission and values, including our longstanding commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” he wrote in explaining the school’s decision to suspend its participation.

“Among other things, the rankings overvalue the amount spent on legal education without regard to how those resources are used, and they place a heavy emphasis on admissions criteria, including standardized tests, in a manner that is not welcoming to students from disadvantaged communities who have been systematically and historically marginalized in our legal system,” Hamoudi added.

In making the move, Pitt joins other law schools in the state including both Penn State Dickinson Law and University Park, as well as the University of Pennsylvania.

In all, at least 42 institutions have done so, asserting that the annual rankings followed closely by prospective students do harm. Other schools have pushed back, saying they will continue to participate, according to a blog kept by Spivey Consulting Group, which focuses on law school admissions.

The Pitt statement said its law school will share additional employment data publicly on its website as it is collected.

For decades, law school and other college rankings from U.S. News have held sway with education consumers navigating the complex admissions arena, but they also have been the subject of controversy and protest by schools. The latest defections began Nov. 16, when Yale and Harvard universities announced that they were withdrawing from participating in the ranking.

Justin Schwartz, Penn State’s interim executive vice president and provost, offered a similar take as Pitt as it announced that its two law schools had ceased participating.

“Relying heavily on a subjective rating submitted by law school administrators and faculty as well as attorneys and judges, the rankings are more of a popularity contest based on perceived prestige rather than a useful tool to help prospective students make a decision about where to pursue their legal education,” Schwartz said.

In recent weeks, U.S. News has taken steps to address criticisms. It informed law deans that for the 2023-24 rankings, only data publicly available would be used and there will be methodology changes, including “reduced emphasis on the peer assessment surveys of academics, lawyers and judges, and an increased weight on outcome measures.”

It also pushed back the deadline for schools to participate to Jan. 27.

But it also has said that while it respects schools’ individual decisions, it will continue to rank schools regardless of whether they choose to participate by sharing data.

“U.S. News has a responsibility to prospective students to provide comparative information that allows them to assess these institutions,” Robert Morse, chief data strategist for U.S. News, said in a Nov. 17 statement, the day after Yale and Harvard announced their moves. “U.S. News will therefore continue to rank the nearly 200 accredited law schools in the United States.”

April Barton, dean and professor of law at Duquesne University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, said Wednesday that her school continues to monitor the situation closely “with an eye on how these rankings influence students, future lawyers and the legal profession.”

Pitt’s law school was founded in 1895 and has an enrollment of about 500. The university, Western Pennsylvania’s largest campus, said there were 1,296 applications for 121 seats in the law class of 2022.

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