Recently we reported that eleven law schools are out of compliance with the ABA's Standard 316. That standard, introduced in its current revised form in May 2019, nominally requires that "[a]t least 75 percent of a law school's graduates who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two years of their graduation". The non-compliant schools are
Faulkner
District of Columbia
Mississippi College
Inter-American (Puerto Rico)
Cooley
South Dakota
Florida Coastal
John Marshall–Atlanta
Florida A&M
Pontifical Catholic (Puerto Rico)
Charleston
In May 2020, the ABA sent letters of non-compliance to all of these but Faulkner. (I have not found an explanation for the failure to call Faulkner out, even though it had the lowest percentage of graduates who took and passed a bar exam.) Those law schools must now produce a report by February 2021 and appear before the relevant council of the ABA in May 2021. The report must present "a reliable plan for coming back into compliance within [a] 2-year period" starting from the date of the letter (in this case May 2020). "The school returns to compliance by showing that a subsequent two-year cohort has a 75% ultimate pass rate"; otherwise "the school’s accreditation will be removed … unless an extension of time is requested by the school and granted by the Council for good cause shown".
This weak standard was adopted despite the militant opposition of the law-school scamsters and their lackeys, who did not want to have their good thing spoiled by even minimal requirements. Note some of the weaknesses of the standard:
1) Schools that have had perfectly dreadful results on the bar exam for years—including all eleven of the schools listed above—still get the full opportunity to improve their results. In the meantime, they continue to draw in new classes of lemmings, few of whom are likely to pass a bar exam ever.
2) The standard refers to "coming back into compliance", but quite a few schools have never been in compliance.
3) Only those graduates "who [have] sat for a bar examination … within two years of their graduation" are considered for the purposes of this standard. A law school can thus manipulate the data by discouraging its least promising graduates from taking any bar exam within two years of graduation, so that their expected failure will not count against the law school. It is well known, and has been reported here, that law schools have resorted to bribery and other corrupt tactics in order to keep students from taking a bar exam.
4) Likewise, a law school could simply reduce enrollment for a couple of years in order to reach the 75% threshold. Many law schools have resorted to this tactic, especially in recent years, so as to seem more competitive or selective than they are.
5) A law school can also turn its curriculum into little more than three years of bar review. Already that is reality at many law schools, despite the pretensions to "global leadership", flashy specialties, scholarship, complex litigation, and so on. Quite a few law schools have formal bar-review courses every semester, and the rest of the curriculum too is effectively more bar review. The ABA prates about rigorous programs of legal education but does little to evaluate, still less to regulate, what is actually done at toilet law schools.
6) The two-year period "for coming back into compliance" can be extended as the ABA sees fit.
7) If a law school fails to achieve compliance within the two-year period or any longer period allowed by the ABA, it can get a further "extension of time", perhaps indefinitely.
8) The ABA affords a full year between the notice of non-compliance and the evaluation of the school's plan for achieving compliance. Throughout that year, the school is free to do as it pleases.
9) The ABA does not say what it will do if the presented plan is deemed unsatisfactory. More extensions? Opportunities to try again?
10) Nothing in this standard stops a law school from manipulating its way into compliance only to fall back into its usual über-toilet practices immediately until slapped on the wrist again for non-compliance. This yo-yo cycle could continue forever.
So what will happen to the ten law schools whose accreditation has been called into question on account of Standard 316? A few of them are so shriveled up or financially threatened that they are likely to fail before the two-year period lapses. The ABA knows this, of course. As for the rest, I expect them to receive the sweetheart treatment from the ABA, which never saw a scam school that it didn't like. Maybe the ABA will feel the need to strip one or two dying schools of their accreditation just for the sake of appearances, to create a veneer of seriousness about upholding standards or policing the law-school scam. It has done the same in recent years to a couple of schools that had one foot in the grave anyway. But what about the rest of the schools? Will they not get extensions and other dispensations until they attain the pitifully low 75% threshold?
I think the standard should be full time permanent jobs that pay a million dollar degree bonus. And if they can't do that, they aren't allowed to advertise that million dollar degree nonsense.
ReplyDeleteOf course under that standard, how many law schools would even be left? How many law schools actually manage to place 75% of graduates in good careers?
Interesting comment. It might be said that that bullshit about the "million-dollar degree" came from a couple of hackademic scribblers, not from the law-school scamsters themselves. That defense falls apart, however, because the piece has been a mainstay of the law-school scam and has been widely promoted to lemmings. And the authors are themselves law-school scamsters who have been handsomely paid for their service to the scam.
DeleteBut even the "million-dollar" lie is losing its luster now that a few law schools cost more than $100k per year to attend (including both tuition and nine months of living expenses in the amount estimated by the law school itself) and several have a total debt-financed cost approaching $400k upon graduation. Even if the "million-dollar degree" were real, a sensible person would think twice before incurring certain expenses that represented a large portion of that alleged expected value.
As for the number of law schools that place at least 75% of graduates in good careers, I refer you to this article, my first at this site:
https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2014/12/guest-post-by-old-guy-which-law-schools.html
Admittedly the article and the data on which it is based are six years old, but still only four law schools saw at least 70% get good jobs (defined as Big Law or federal clerkships; see the text for an explanation), and not a single one saw 80% get those jobs.
Really surprised to see South Dakota on this list. Would the ABA really pull the accreditation of a state flagship?
ReplyDeleteI don't expect the ABA to pull the accreditation of those schools except perhaps the moribund Florida Coastal (the last surviving InfiLaw über-toilet) and Pontifical Catholic (where the majority are unemployed and most of the rest are marginally employed: https://www.lstreports.com/schools/catholic-pr/jobs/). South Dakota and the others will manipulate their way over the 75% threshold, and the ABA will duly certify that nothing whatsoever is wrong.
DeleteSouth Dakota could at least try to appeal to their state's bar examiners for a more lax passing score.
DeleteYeah and I can't get a hate boner for the Dakota schools. They are incredibly cheap for in-state and while you would get looked down upon by some, if you want a public service career in the Dakotas, it isn't the worst option since it has produced a lot local politicians. Even if it doesn't pan out 30k in debt to South Dakota beats the fuck out of $280k to a trash fire like Cooley or Costal (the latter has been running a lot of Facebook adds lately....). One of my friends had a 158 and a 3.2 and got a mega scholarship from SD with that goal in mind.
DeleteThe fact that it has produced a lot of local politicians does not mean that it is not a bad option; indeed, it is of little relevance to the desirability of the U of South Dakota as a law school today.
DeleteAs for the cost, tuition alone is well over $22k per year for residents of South Dakota and $50k for others. That puts it square in Cooley territory for non-residents of South Dakota. Indeed, the debt-financed cost of attending the U of South Dakota is $283k; Cooley's is "only" $262k.
The mediocre score of 158 should not earn "a mega scholarship". If by "that goal" you mean becoming a local politician, I submit that a degree in law is neither necessary nor sufficient, nor for that matter very beneficial, to that end.
Out of state would be retarded. Law school numbers had it at 15k but I guess that could be out of date. I didn't say it was the best option just that you could do a lot worse and it's a small state flagship. The way he explained it to me is that the network is really good if you want to run and for AG you do need a law degree. Free tuition plus a stipend isn't the worst way to take a shot at something like that. Barring an opportunity cost but it's South Dakota, there's not much there.
Delete@ 9:17 If the degree from those schools makes a government attorney job in those states a likelihood, than your case might have some merit. If it is only say a 25% chance, and I don't know if it would even be that high, and there are other factors, class rank, connections, etc. Then I don't think so.
DeleteAs OG said, this standard is effectively discretionary because they can approve unlimited extensions for "good cause."
ReplyDeleteBut it's not just the ABA's discretion. If a school has the financial wherewithal to take a loss for a couple of years, it can just temporarily increase scholarships and shrink the class so they have a better student body until compliant results are achieved. Then they can go back to open admission and the process starts all over.
So, the only schools this standard can close are schools that do not have the financial wherewithal to take this temporary loss AND which the ABA discretionarily WANTS taken out. If BOTH those conditions are met, then the ABA can effectively shutter the school by denying extensions.
Thus, as OP said, it can really only take out schools that have a foot in the grave already, and even then only if the ABA needs a sacrificial lamb.
True, but the strategy of buying a class or two would not necessarily work. Indiana Tech tried it by reducing tuition to zero, but only fifteen new students showed up, and it is doubtful that they would have done well as a group on the bar exams (the original cohort had only a single person pass—and two others on appeal).
DeleteSo that strategy might also involve discouraging people from taking a bar exam. Law skules certainly are not above that.
But, yes, the "standard" as implemented can perpetuate the law-school scam while enabling the ABA to appear serious by slaughtering a sacrificial lamb every now and then when that lamb is practically dead already.
Interesting RE Indiana. Didn't know that. Yeah if you're gonna buy a good class then the class you buy still has to be good. So your zero-tuition offer is going to have to be coupled with admission standards that are unusually selective for your school. Like kids with 160s and stuff. Those kids tend to be smart enough to do their homework and they'll know they're still investing three years of time and living expenses for a school that could close shortly after they graduate, which would not bode well for their employment prospects.
DeleteI guess the lesson for schools is that if you get that desperate, the school might actually have to make tuition a negative number. I.e. literally pay you to attend like how they give not just tuition waivers, but also stipends to PhDs.
On Indiana Tech and the fifteen-student entering class that got free tuition, see "Indiana Tech Can't Even Be Given Away":
Deletehttps://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2015/09/indiana-tech-cant-even-be-given-away.html
Christ, that was five years ago. Time flies!
You're right about the better sorts of students: they tend to know better than to pass up William and Mary in favor of Cooley. (The correct decision is to turn both schools down.) What is sad is that they are likely to take Vanderbilt over Harvard just because of money, whereas their rich counterparts that make up the bulk of the class at Harvard (and at Vanderbilt, incidentally) would never consider that choice.
Negative tuition is a reality for a handful of students. At Vermont Law School, for instance, about five students get discounts in excess of tuition, meaning that they are paid to attend. The same is true for some two dozen students at John Marshall–Chicago (recently rechristened the U of Illinois at Chicago). Even public institutions get in on this game: the U of Arkansas at Little Rock pays about eight students to attend, Florida State buys off about ninety, and respectable Michigan has about twenty.
Is negative tuition a good bet? Probably, at Michigan and some of its peers. Probably not at the other schools, unless the bribe is particularly enticing. Old Guy was tempted to sign up at Thomas Jefferson this time last year, just for the substantial bribe on offer.
Note that the "standard" still allows a school to go on, year after year, watching one graduate in four fail the bar exams despite being saddled with $300k in non-dischargeable debt—not to mention all of those that do not take a bar exam within two years of graduation and therefore have practically no hope of using their degree to get the sort of job that could support debt of that size.
ReplyDeleteOld Guy wonders whether the very size of the debt taken out for law school doesn't perversely make law school more appealing to some lemmings. Many may imagine that their ability to borrow $300k or more for law school at age 22 bears witness to their personal excellence. The reality of being used by law-school scamsters seems not to penetrate lemmings' skulls.
I don't think the lemmings are proud of being able to borrow 300k, but the schools are sometimes pretty bold about making sure they have no reason to care how much debt they go into, thanks to IBR. Most of them just quietly counsel their students about this, but we know what it looks like if they go big on that:
DeleteRemember when Georgetown got excoriated in the press for agreeing to make grads' IBR payments for them? I don't think anything came of it, but the papers correctly realized that this is essentially a kickback. Student "borrows" 200k from the taxpayer, which the school gets upfront. But if the student does his paperwork then he is only expected to pay back a fraction of this amount due to IBR. That fractional amount is then kicked back from the school to the student.
IBR was already a moral hazard, but if your school tells you they'll pick up the IBR payments if you end up needing IBR, then all they are really doing is kicking a small percentage of the amount you borrowed back to you, as an inducement to get you to borrow the much larger amount.
In most other scenarios involving federal money, that would violate the anti kickback statute and the orchestrators could be criminally prosecuted. But not in this case, apparently.
Not a chance post-George Floyd that the ABA will sanction a skule with a diverse student body. The optics are horrible.
ReplyDeleteWhat about law school endowments? How do school endowments affect school funding and operations? The top schools and many others have huge endowments. Georgetown University has an endowment of about $1.5 billion:
ReplyDeletehttps://financialaffairs.georgetown.edu/endowments/
Using a simple 4% yearly withdraw rate:
($1,500,000,000.00 x 0.04) = $60 million per year.
This analysis may be too simplistic, but it probably is in the ballpark for the amount of funds that can be drawn from such largesse to fund their operations.
If it is simplistic, that is because the endowment covers the entire university, not just the law school.
DeleteSome law schools will publish on their recruitment propaganda that "we give $5,000,000 of financial aid to students annually." Now, that's a good ballpark estimate of the school's 4% withdrawal rate - that is, the school uses its endowment draw to fund "discounts." So, $5m times 25 is $125,000,000 as an endowment. It's an absurdly rough estimate.
DeleteHistorically, tuition would not have been regarded as the main source of a school's support, which would be grants, direct taxpayer funds in the case of public schools, and endowments. Or in medieval times, college mostly existed to train the clergy so the churches obviously weren't going to charge people who were going to take a vow of poverty.
DeleteSome quick googling reveals that it wasn't until the 1950s that tuition was anything that anyone would consider at all "substantial" and not til the 70s did it start to really ramp up. And of course it was still very cheap back then by today's standards, but that is where the very notion of what tuition IS started to change.
In other words, before we even talk about tuition being too high, a more fundamental thought has to be had about the very notion of what it is and what it's for. A school that just charges as much tuition as it can get away with and gives the surplus to its owners (or via high salaries to the people that control it, in the case of a nonprofit) would historically have meant that the school was not truly a school, but just a business like any other. And of course, that makes the students not students but customers which is why you see grade inflation and luxury dorms.
Point is, tuition was never meant for this purpose. If it existed at all in tradition, it was more of a sliding scale thing that offset some costs, but historically it would not have been regarded as "the way you keep the lights on." The fact that tuition is now the main source of revenue for most educational institutions means we're losing sight of what a university was traditionally supposed to be.
And the schools that have both massive tuition revenue AND massive endowments? That is just absurd. They're just hoarding, sitting on piles of gold like Smaug the Dragon.
The "financial aid" (often cast as "scholarships") is frequently not actual money from an endowment but rather a discount. Quite a few law schools now give substantial discounts to the great majority of their students. It is disingenuous to pass the discounts off as financial aid given. One might as well sell ten hot dogs per day at $1,000,005 each, with a $1,000,000 discount, and claim thereby to donate $10 million per day to the community.
DeleteThat's a good analysis, 2:03. Indeed, universities in the US have become ordinary commercial entities. Other manifestations of that:
Delete* the eagerness to admit damn near anyone
* the importance of brand names and rankings
* the glorification of male football and basketball teams, to the point that these often overshadow the institutions' academic functions and scholarly endeavors
* the feeling of entitlement to a degree, with the corollary that at least bachelor's degrees nowadays are more or less bought and sold
* a tendency to cater to parochial interests, notwithstanding fancy Latin mottoes that celebrate the pursuit of truth
* the large array of remedial courses (within living memory, these did not exist at all)
Fees paid by students are triflingly low in much of the world, while standards of admission are far higher. Male athletic teams affiliated with universities are practically unknown outside the US (to a much smaller and much less vulgar extent in Canada). Remedial courses are uncommon: those who are insufficiently prepared are expected to address their shortcomings before enrolling, not afterwards.
Good point about sports, 6:21. Europeans are really baffled by this. To them, college sports are "just some students having a laugh."
DeleteIn all fairness though, only a relatively small number of "powerhouse" schools actually make money from football/b-ball. It's just a small subset of the most elite division, like D1-FBS for football. For the rest it's just a money pit made all the worse by the need to have all those other sports no one cares about for PR purposes and/or TIX compliance. There's a reason those celebs now facing criminal charges bribed their kids in by way of the coaches of obscure sports who agreed to tell administration that a student was a "recruit" for a sport they'd never played: No one cares so no one is watching. Yet all those scholarships for obscure sports are still being subsidized by everyone's tuition dollars.
So sports really demonstrates two problems in higher ed: At the powerhouses it demonstrates the commercialization and exploitation of "student athletes" who are students in name only. They didn't really get the degree subject to the same expectations as others and everyone knows it, so if they don't get drafted (and most of them won't) they end up selling used cars or whatever. But at the rest of the schools, it also further documents the massive amount of waste going on in higher ed.
I'll tell ya, 2:03, even though one of my alma maters was affected I absolutely LOVED IT when Trump and the Republicans slapped a tax on the worst "Smaugs." They had reached a point where you can't really lose. When you have enough swag stashed away your pile will grow itself ad infinitum.
DeleteThe part of college sports that is rarely discussed is the huge effect they have on alumni donations. Some schools make money by losing money because donations cover the shortfall and then some. I once heard the football coach at one of the great New England elite liberal arts schools observe that when the contributing alumni of every school in the conference decide they want to see a winning season every year you've got a problem.
DeleteAdd to that the Dukes and Stanfords and Notre Dames out there do not in any way exploit their athletes and you see it's all very complicated and will be with us for a long time.
I don't think you can say any powerhouse school does not exploit its athletes. Exploitation is mandatory because NCAA rules prohibit paying them, prohibit them getting outside income from doing ads, etc. etc.
DeleteA question: when was the last time the ABA actually closed a previously-accredited law school? Several law schools have closed the past few years, and several had had some trouble with the ABA, but it appears that all closed for financial reasons and not because the ABA revoked accreditation.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that the ABA will continue on its established path: it will give perceived violators chance after chance, with the process taking years, and never actually take any action which leads to the closure of a law school, no matter how bad that law school is or how serious the alleged violations of standards.
Well, that's a difficult question, as financial trouble and loss of accreditation often go hand in hand. The ABA is unlikely to strip accreditation from a financially viable law school, however shabby it be.
DeleteThe last case of that seems to have been the Eugenio María de Hostos School of Law in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, which lost its accreditation about twenty years ago. It was an upstart with financial problems, but the main reason for loss of accreditation seems to have been the graduates' disastrous performance on bar exams. The school lingered on in some sort of provisional status for a number of years before shutting its doors for good. But even it, as I mentioned, was financially shaky.
Loss of ABA accreditation has happened only rarely. The only cases of which I know are from the last two decades. Thomas Jefferson did lose its accreditation last year (https://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2019/11/hasenpfeffer-incorporated-meet-slave.html), but it was also down to a pitiful number of students and had huge financial woes to boot.
Geez, these scam schools are harder to kill than cockroaches. TJ loses its ABA accreditation, so now its website announces that it's "excited" to become a California bar law school, joining the elite company of California-bar only schools that produces a CA Bar pass rate of 17%.
DeleteNo doubt several hackademics will get laid off, but TJ survives....maybe. Its website was a bit vague, with nothing more than "Summer 2020" and "Please check back periodically". But it's not giving up...
Right. There's a lot of due process and cure opportunities associated with stripping a school of accreditation, not to mention potential antitrust problems if the school thinks it's being singled out for anti-competitive reasons.
DeleteSo as a practical matter, a school with substantial resources that does not want to close will probably be able to stay open, and schools that are already in extremis will typically opt for an orderly and "voluntary" wind-down under a teach-out plan.
It's kinda like being asked to resign or get fired. Most people would rather save some face and bow out gracefully, and the ABA would prefer that too since they are controlled by law school cartels and prolly wouldn't close anyone if it weren't for the need to keep up appearances. It's in everyone's interest to pick the low-hanging fruit, so push would rarely if ever come to shove. Plus, once you go into teach-out mode you get to pocket a couple more years' tuition til the last class graduates instead of potentially going into the red trying to hold on.
Concordia Law is throwing in the towel.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article243797292.html
Thanks for that. Every death of a law school deserves a celebration here at Outside the Law School Scam, so I shall publish an announcement.
DeleteOne more trash pit down the toilet. One is better than none.
Delete