Statement About Harvard’s Ranking Decision

The U.S. News and World Report magazine’s ranking system for medical schools has long presented a problem for prestigious institutions like Harvard and Penn, where I used to teach. These medical schools desperately want to admit more students based on race, which they’ve done by lowering standards and admitting some students who didn’t take the MCAT. They want to admit more, but the U.S. News Rankings won’t let them without rightly penalizing their ranking. Now Harvard medical school can admit whoever it wants, on whatever standards it wants, and it can still claim to be #1. Harvard just cancelled ranking systems.

We should see this move for what it is: The denial of merit in the name of diversity. There was a time when admission to Harvard medical school meant you had superior academic achievement. That is no longer true, and Harvard should be ashamed for emphasizing skin color over academic and medical excellence.