Legal Education

2020: Applications and Enrollments Flat

By October 2020, there were 36,802 enrollees from the applicant pool at 194 ABA-accredited law schools not in Puerto Rico. This is down 173 (-0.5 percent) from 36,975 in October 2019. La Verne, Thomas Jefferson, and Concordia no longer grace the ABA’s spreadsheets.

Moving to applications, these 194 law schools received 375,541 applications to all their programs, up 50 (-0.0 percent) from 375,491. The median law school accepted 45.4 percent of its applicants, which is down from 47.1 percent in 2019. Here’s an image of the dispersion.

Shifting to distribution, the Gini coefficient for applications among these 194 law schools is down to 0.435. Last year (2019) it was .444, so 2020 looks more like 2018, but these are slight fluctuations compared to 2011 when it was 0.357. (You can read about how to interpret Gini coefficients mean here.)

As with previous years, below is a modified Lorenz curve, a line that typically measures the cumulative distribution of a quantity in order from the recipient of the smallest amount to the largest. Usually researchers use it to illustrate the distribution of income among households. I’ve modified the Lorenz curve according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings for the previous year because the rankings are an independent measurement of law-school eliteness as seen by LSAT takers and applicants roughly at the time that they apply. Here is what I could cobble together going back to 2011.

It’s not very clear because the last few applications cycles have been very similar, but after squinting and clicking around, I saw that indeed, the distribution of applications shifted away from the more prominent law schools. Within the top 14, 20, 50, 51-100, 101 plus, and not published, the mean average of the share of all applications are very similar to 2019.

Information on this topic from prior years:

2019: Law School Applications Fall 1 Percent, Enrollments Flat

By October 2019, there were 36,983 enrollees from the applicant pool at 197 ABA-accredited law schools not in Puerto Rico. This is down 67 (-0.2 percent) from 37,050 in October 2018. Three law schools, Valparaiso, Whittier, and Arizona Summit, appear on the ABA’s required disclosures Web site and spreadsheets, but they are just placeholders. Arizona Summit had 17 enrollees last year. La Verne and Thomas Jefferson do have 509 reports, even though they announced their closures.

Moving to applications, these 197 law schools received 375,468 applications to all their programs, down 3,679 (-1.0 percent) from 379,147. The median law school accepted 47.1 percent of its applicants, but that’s only down from 47.9 percent in 2018. Here’s an image of the dispersion; overall, they’re trending downward, signifying increased selectivity.

With fewer applications and flat enrollments, the analysis of application distribution becomes more salient. Once again, applicants trended toward more interest in some law schools than others. The Gini coefficient for applications among all 197 of these law schools is now 0.444, which is negligibly higher than last year (0.436). By contrast, back in 2011 it was only 0.357. (You can read about how to interpret Gini coefficients mean here.)

As with previous years, below is a modified Lorenz curve, a line that typically measures the cumulative distribution of a quantity in order from the recipient of the smallest amount to the largest. Usually researchers use it to illustrate the distribution of income among households. I’ve modified the Lorenz curve according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings for the previous year because the rankings are an independent measurement of law-school eliteness as seen by LSAT takers and applicants roughly at the time that they apply. Here is what I could cobble together going back to 2011.

The U.S. News rankings can be quite fluid year to year the further down its list one goes, and in the previous two years there’s been some shifting into and out of the top 50, next 50, and 101-150. It appears that the average top-50 law school received 2.4 percent less applications than in the 2018 cycle, but in the more static top 14, the average was plus 4.9 percent. The next 50 saw a 1.3 percent decline on average, but the remaining didn’t change much at all.

Information on this topic from prior years:

2018: Total Applications Up, But Only for the Top Half

By October 2018, there were 37,052 enrollees at 200 ABA-accredited law schools not in Puerto Rico. This is up 1,290 (+7.9 percent) from 35,762 in October 2017. (Last year, the initial reporting had 35,381 enrollees, so there’s been significant upward revision.) This year marks the first “clean” comparison between two enrollment cycles because the ABA adopted the October-October standard last year. In 2018, one law school, Valparaiso, dropped to zero enrollees. It had 28 last year. Miraculously, Arizona Summit submitted a report. It had 65 applicants and 17 enrollees (49 last year). Thus, neither of these law schools hampered the upward trend in enrollments much.

Moving on to applications…

Predictably, with more applicants acceptance rates are lower this year. The median law school accepted just less than half of everyone who applied.

Applicants showed more interest in some law schools than others this year. The Gini coefficient for applications among all 200 of these law schools is now 0.442, which is 1.4 points higher than last year (0.427). By contrast, back in 2011 it was only 0.357. (You can read about what that means here.)

Some of this increased application inequality is even visible in my modified Lorenz curve, a measure that typically measures the cumulative distribution of a quantity in order from the recipient of the smallest amount to the largest. Usually researchers use the distribution of income among households. I’ve modified the Lorenz curve according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings for the previous year because the rankings are an independent measurement of law-school eliteness as seen by LSAT takers and applicants roughly at the time that they apply. Here is what I could cobble together going back to 2011.

Last year, I asked, “Will unheralded law schools benefit from the bump, or will our idealists apply strategically to top law schools?” The answer appears to be no followed by a yes. The U.S. News rankings can be quite volatile further down, but not so much between chunks of 50, at least for this year. It appears that the average top-50 law school received 14 percent more applications than in the 2017 October cycle. The next 50 reaped a 12.7 percent increase, but the remaining saw almost no benefit of the Trump bump on average. In short, for law schools below 100 it’s business as usual, i.e. slow.

That’s all.

Information on this topic from prior years:

CLASS OF 2017 EMPLOYMENT REPORT: Take That, JD-Advantage Jobs!

So I was all set to write up the class of 2017 employment report two weekends ago, but I went out of town twice, so that distracted me from my very important blogging duties. To make up for that I’m redoing my annual employment report by foregrounding the actual important information and editorials and then following up with the employed-bar-passage-required full-time, long-term ranking of shame.

To begin with, here’s the table of graduate underemployment. (Everything on this post excludes the three Puerto Rico law schools.)

STATUS (EXCL. P.R.) 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Unemployed – Not Seeking 1,245 1,014 939 795 553 494 469 441
Unemployed – Seeking 2,686 4,016 4,770 5,060 4,103 3,744 3,142 2,614
Status Unknown 1,458 1,453 1,073 979 841 766 557 437
Total Grads 43,526 43,735 45,757 46,112 43,195 39,423 36,619 34,392
Unemployed – Not Seeking 2.9% 2.3% 2.1% 1.7% 1.3% 1.3% 1.3% 1.3%
Unemployed – Seeking 6.2% 9.2% 10.4% 11.0% 9.5% 9.5% 8.6% 7.6%
Status Unknown 3.3% 3.3% 2.3% 2.1% 1.9% 1.9% 1.5% 1.3%
Total Percent 12.4% 14.8% 14.8% 14.8% 12.7% 12.7% 11.4% 10.2%

For ’17, the underemployment rate (“Total Percent” in the table) fell by yet another percentage point, almost all of which appeared in the Unemployed – Seeking category. This is good news. 10.2 percent is still a terrible rate, to say nothing of the 7.6 percent seeking work, but progress is progress.

On the reverse side, 67.1 percent of graduates found full-time long-term work in bar-passage-required jobs. Last year, that figure was 62.5 percent, so this is quite the jump. In three years, the percentage has risen by 10 points, which is quite notable, except that the absolute number of students finding these jobs has been roughly the same each year. Reducing students at unheralded law schools reduces poor outcomes.

So what differed this year? Let’s take a look at the analytic tables that compare this year to last year.

EMPLOYMENT STATUS NO. OF GRADS GRADS PCT. OF TOTAL PCT. CHANGE IN GRADS DISTRIBUTION OF CHANGE IN GRADS GINI COEFFICIENT
2016 2017 2016 2017 2017 2017 2016 2017
Employed – Bar Passage Required 23,833 23,939 65.1% 69.6% 0.4% -4.8% 0.34 0.34
Employed – JD Advantage 5,162 4,021 14.1% 11.7% -22.1% 51.2% 0.36 0.38
Employed – Professional Position 1,390 1,091 3.8% 3.2% -21.5% 13.4% 0.54 0.54
Employed – Non-Professional Position 435 401 1.2% 1.2% -7.8% 1.5% 0.54 0.55
Employed – Law School 757 605 2.1% 1.8% -20.1% 6.8% 0.80 0.79
Employed – Undeterminable 21 23 0.1% 0.1% 9.5% -0.1% 0.95 0.92
Employed – Pursuing Graduate Degree 600 535 1.6% 1.6% -10.8% 2.9% 0.50 0.52
Unemployed – Start Date Deferred 253 285 0.7% 0.8% 12.6% -1.4% 0.64 0.59
Unemployed – Not Seeking 469 441 1.3% 1.3% -6.0% 1.3% 0.57 0.52
Unemployed – Seeking 3,142 2,614 8.6% 7.6% -16.8% 23.7% 0.46 0.43
Employment Status Unknown 557 437 1.5% 1.3% -21.5% 5.4% 0.67 0.66
Total Graduates 36,619 34,392 100.0% 100.0% -6.1% 100.0% 0.29 0.29
EMPLOYMENT TYPE NO. OF GRADS GRADS PCT. OF TOTAL PCT. CHANGE IN GRADS DISTRIBUTION OF CHANGE IN GRADS GINI COEFFICIENT
2016 2017 2016 2017 2017 2017 2016 2017
Solo 508 439 1.4% 1.3% -13.6% 3.1% 0.61 0.58
2-10 6,269 5,773 17.1% 16.8% -7.9% 22.3% 0.35 0.33
11-25 1,739 1,695 4.7% 4.9% -2.5% 2.0% 0.41 0.42
26-50 942 998 2.6% 2.9% 5.9% -2.5% 0.43 0.45
51-100 797 800 2.2% 2.3% 0.4% -0.1% 0.48 0.48
101-250 958 977 2.6% 2.8% 2.0% -0.9% 0.51 0.51
251-500 1,008 1,003 2.8% 2.9% -0.5% 0.2% 0.68 0.64
501-PLUS 4,243 4,611 11.6% 13.4% 8.7% -16.5% 0.78 0.77
Unknown 228 96 0.6% 0.3% -57.9% 5.9% 0.91 0.85
Business Industry 4,930 4,142 13.5% 12.0% -16.0% 35.4% 0.36 0.36
Government 4,402 4,133 12.0% 12.0% -6.1% 12.1% 0.32 0.32
Public Interest 1,638 1,617 4.5% 4.7% -1.3% 0.9% 0.47 0.48
Federal Clerkship 1,197 1,170 3.3% 3.4% -2.3% 1.2% 0.72 0.69
State/Local Clerkship 2,091 2,050 5.7% 6.0% -2.0% 1.8% 0.58 0.58
Other Clerkship 20 24 0.1% 0.1% 20.0% -0.2% 0.93 0.93
Education 583 483 1.6% 1.4% -17.2% 4.5% 0.49 0.48
Unknown Employer Type 45 67 0.1% 0.2% 48.9% -1.0% 0.94 0.91
Total Employed by Type 31,598 30,078 86.3% 87.5% -4.8% 68.3% 0.30 0.31

For ’17, there were 2,227 fewer graduates than in 2016, a decline of 6.1 percent. Three employment statuses accounted for nearly 90 percent of the difference between the two classes: Employed JD Advantage (51.2%) (!), Unemployed – Seeking (23.7%), and Employed – Professional Position (13.4%). This pretty much tells you what you need to know about this year’s employment report.

Changes among the employment types accounted for 68.3 percent of the 2,227 graduates. The four largest drivers were business-and-industry jobs (35.4%), 2-10-lawyer practices (22.3%), government jobs (12.1%), education positions (4.5%), and solo practices (3.1%). Notably, jobs at 501-plus-lawyer firms grew by 368 people, so it pushed back against the graduate decline (-16.5%). Biglaw’s gains are consistent with last year’s trends, as is the decline in small-law jobs.

I won’t discuss the Gini coefficients as I did last year. The most desirable jobs are still distributed worse than wealth in a kleptocracy.

Editorial: This year’s employment report showcased many of the similar trends from last year: Good outcomes substituting for worse ones. It differs in that JD advantage jobs took a big hit while bar-passage-required jobs grew slightly. What’s interesting here is that overall, law-firm jobs fell nonetheless. Somewhere in the employment type outcomes are compositional changes where grads found law jobs and not JD advantage jobs. I sure hope none of that is accounting shenanigans by law schools.

Finally, I’m happy that the ABA has not implemented its decision to change how it collects and displays employment data. Readers will note that I did not repeat the mistakes regarding law-school-funded jobs that I made last year, and yes, I recognize that perhaps I don’t find much use for short-term or part-time job categories. Nevertheless, the purposes of careful data collection are usefulness, detail, transparency, and consistency—not what’s convenient for law-school employees.

That’s all for now.

Similar editions of this post from prior years can be found here:

2017: Full-Time Applications Plummet

…Because the ABA’s standard 509 information reports no longer track them, which reminds me of the outrage directed at the ABA last summer for rubber-stamping one law professor’s vision for collecting and displaying employment data to the masses. For those into the cloak-and-dagger stuff, the Data Policy and Collection Committee was folded into the Standards Review Committee earlier this year, and it “reevaluated” the annual questionnaire it sends to law schools. You can read about it here (docx).

One of the bigger changes is eliminating the distinction between part-time and full-time law students wherever it could be found except in tuition costs (thankfully) and scholarship awards. This means that law schools that admit large numbers of part-time students, who tend not to do so well on the LSAT, can see their average LSAT scores nosedive. Also, instead of tracking calendar-year applications, offers, and matriculants, the reports now only measure October-October applications, offers, and … enrollees? Makes them sound like participants in unethical science experiments, but at least spellchecker can tolerate them.

Naturally, as someone who tracks ABA law-school data longitudinally going back to the Clinton administration, I think these changes are monumentally stupid, especially eliminating the full-time/part-time distinction. However, the ABA rarely announces these decisions openly and doesn’t have some kind of RSS feed for those of who care to track it. That’s probably an even dumber mistake.

So, going forward, when it comes to my first annual 509 post on law school … enrollees, I will use data for all law students. I’ve been able to reassemble the data going back to calendar-year 2011, but obviously the change in the data-collection year from “calendar year” to “admissions cycle” will distort the results somewhat (I doubt there are too many October-December enrollees). Too bad. Yell at the ABA.

By October 2017, there were 35,381 enrollees at 200 ABA-accredited law schools not in Puerto Rico, which probably didn’t have any enrollees left by October anyway. This is down 1,212 (-3.3 percent) from 36,593 in December 2016. Some of this is due to two law schools closing and one ceasing admissions. Charlotte (-343), Whittier (-132), and Indiana Tech (-41) together account for about 43 percent of the 1,212-enrollee drop.

In other words, aside from thinning the law-school herd, 2017 isn’t that different from 2016.

Application acceptance rates are a little lower. The median law school saw about 1.7 percent more applications than last year.

Sorry this isn’t as complete as in past years. I can’t spend a whole weekend hand-coding Official Guide info going back another twelve years.

Applicants showed trivially more interest in more law schools this year, according to my modified Lorenz curve. The overall Gini coefficient is down trivially this year to 0.427. (You can read about what that means here.)

A Lorenz curve measures the cumulative distribution of a quantity in order from the recipient of the smallest amount to the largest. Usually researchers use the distribution of income among households. I’ve modified the Lorenz curve according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings for the previous year because the rankings are an independent measurement of law-school eliteness as seen by LSAT takers and applicants roughly at the time that they apply. Here is what I could cobble together going back to 2011.

Given that applications were mostly flat this year, it’s unsurprising that there hasn’t been much change in the distribution of applications.

Next year, thanks to His Emolumence’s perfidy, we’ll have a kind of natural experiment of what happens when applications rise after everyone’s been told that law school is a bad idea. Will unheralded law schools benefit from the bump, or will our idealists apply strategically to top law schools? Will Grad PLUS loans go the way of the full-time matriculants? Find out next year.

This post consolidates information from multiple posts over previous years. You can read prior coverage at the following links.

As Charlotte Closes, a Plea for Data Integrity

The ABA Journal heralds the closure of Charlotte Law School. I have no editorial beyond, well, it was an honestly dishonest student loan funnel, struggling since January, and Betsy DeVos couldn’t save it. If we’re unlucky, it’ll bounce back.

As a tie-back to last week’s post on the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s decision to simplify law-school employment data, which it’s walked back, I write to express worries about how the ABA manages data for closed or merged law schools.

As of now, users of the Standard 509 Reports page can merrily explore information on bygone law schools such as Hamline, but anyone interested in the adventures of post-merger schools such as Rutgers-Camden will find no separate information on it. It has no 509 reports, it doesn’t appear in the spreadsheets for past years, and in some years the “Rutgers” (merged) entry contains no information at all.

This poses a problem for researchers because the 509 reports reflect law schools as they exist today and not how they existed in the past. I guess it would take more effort to maintain information on old law schools, but doing so anachronistically raises the question of why the ABA bothers keeping reports for past years up.

I try to download a set of the 509 information reports annually as a backup (yes, it’s tedious) and because it’s partly how this blog found its footing. I don’t do so for the employment summary reports (because, yes, it’s tedious). I would prefer not to change my habits.

Thus, I ask that the ABA maintain it’s information reports on law schools consistently for the sake of researchers. Indiana Tech, Charlotte, Whittier, and the schools that have merged may not rise again, but I’m sure someone might want to know more about their existences, even for trivial information like application deadlines.

LSAT Tea-Leaf Reading: June 2017 Edition

For those of you who were as curious as I about whether a secular trend in law-school interest was causing the uptick in LSATs, well, too bad! Count me in on the bandwagon attributing it to His Emolumence’s perfidy. I try to caution against reading the minds of potential law-school applicants, but what other explanation is there? In June 2017, 27,606 people took the LSAT, up an amazing 19.8 percent from a year ago (23,051).

The four-period moving sum rose by 4.2 percent to 113,909, a record not seen since December 2012 (115,348). To put these numbers in context, the last time there were this many June LSAT-takers was June 2010 (32,973). You know, back when I first joined the crowed warning people that law school was usually a bad idea. In fact, the year-over-year growth rate is the highest going all the way back to 1988—the second year for which the LSAC reliably publishes LSAT-administration information. The 4.2-percent growth rate for the moving sum is comparable to December (4.1 percent) and September/October (6.5 percent) 2009 . If I had seen the June 2017 LSAT without knowing anything else, I’d’ve thought the economy was in a recession (or L.A. Law came on the air, which is what some claim caused the ’80s surge).

I note three more items. One, the LSAC sure released this information a lot more quickly than last year, when it took until August to tell us about the June LSAT results. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was happy to discuss good news…

Two, I acknowledge that the 19.8-percent LSAT jolt was leaked last week. Uh-huh. That’s consistent with the times…

Three, if the political cause for the renewed enthusiasm is true, then bless these LSAT-takers idealistic hearts. However, next to nothing has changed in the U.S. or legal economies since Inauguration Day to warrant a more optimistic outlook on the legal profession (unless you’re defending His Emolumence and his family, in which case, you’re probably teetering in the character-and-fitness department). Meanwhile, going by my predictions from earlier this year, it appears Congress is going nowhere, so don’t expect much reform of Grad PLUS loans. Instead, maybe Betsy DeVos will whip up yet another income-directed repayment plan. Or maybe she’ll get high on Ben Carson’s glyconutrients stash.

Final word: I can’t imagine the renewed interest in law school lasting as long as our dear leader’s tenure in office, but it may be a while yet.

Which Law Schools Are Like Whittier?

Whittier Law School announced it will no longer enroll 1L classes but will graduate the students it has. It is the first fully accredited law school that is straight up closing, i.e. it isn’t merging with another school or finding some other way out of its problems. It’s going for good.

Whittier is not the school I would’ve predicted to be the first to close. Certainly it was in a high-risk category, but I thought others were in direr straits, and Whittier isn’t even freestanding. Charlotte lost its federal loan funding. The ABA censured Valparaiso (pdf), put Arizona Summit on probation (pdf), and told Ave Maria it was out of compliance with its standards (pdf). La Verne lost its provisional accreditation once, and the fates of (un)merged Camden and Penn-State Dickinson appear sealed. Indiana Tech immolated on the launch pad. These days the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s Web site looks more like an academic police blotter than an accrediting body’s homepage.

The question all this raises is: What law schools might be in situations similar to Whittier’s?

We can answer by comparing Whittier to other law schools on various dimensions, particularly debt, employment outcomes, and estimated revenue from full-time students paying full tuition. (Others have already done most of the work on bar-passage rates.)

This past year, U.S. News ranked Whittier as number two for average disbursed graduate debt, $179,056, but its figure was 20 percent higher than last year. It’s a volatile measure, but this year some of its notable nearest neighbors were Thomas Jefferson, San Francisco, American, Golden Gate, John Marshall (Chicago), and Florida Coastal. Most of these law schools featured prominently on debt rankings in previous years.

A couple years ago, I applied the Department of Education’s “gainful employment” rule to all law schools—not just for-profits—and found that Whittier’s 2014 graduates would need to earn more than $80,000 to avoid a failing grade. Four years of failing would mean losing access to federal funding, and nearly a quarter of Whittier’s graduates were totally unemployed after graduating. That figure hasn’t improved since (~23 percent for class of 2015 grads). We’ll soon learn how bad the class of 2016 is doing, but Whittier’s full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required employment rate has been so abysmal that it ranks near the three law schools in Puerto Rico. (Yes, bar-passage rates feed into this outcome.)

The one metric where Whittier wasn’t doing as badly as many other (private) law schools was its cumulative losses in tuition revenue from full-time students. In 2015-16, it took in nearly $6 million, but in 2011-12 it received $13.5 million. The 56 percent drop puts it at number 64 among private law schools (though the top schools, Vermont, Brooklyn, WMU Cooley, and California Western, reported more students receiving grants than they had full-time students, which would probably bump Whittier up a few notches). 56 percent is rough, but a bunch of private law schools lost even larger shares of money—and some took in only a few hundred thousand dollars in full-time tuition revenue last year.

Here’s what the situation looks like for all private law schools, sorted by the percent decline. Note that for once, I am including the two private law schools in Puerto Rico because I feel their performance is indicative of the worst. These figures are adjusted for inflation.

REVENUE FROM FULL-TIME STUDENTS PAYING FULL-TUITION
# SCHOOL 2011 2015 CUMULATIVE LOSS PERCENT CHANGE
1. Vermont 10,860,119 -5,422,079 -16,282,198 -149.9%
2. Brooklyn 10,782,779 -3,509,376 -14,292,155 -132.5%
3. WMU Cooley 1,557,772 -478,900 -2,036,672 -130.7%
4. California Western 25,045,967 -897,940 -25,943,907 -103.6%
5. St. Thomas (MN) 5,743,284 37,941 -5,705,343 -99.3%
6. Appalachian 9,093,131 125,300 -8,967,831 -98.6%
7. Washington and Lee 6,903,362 185,988 -6,717,374 -97.3%
8. Tulsa 4,599,211 142,116 -4,457,095 -96.9%
9. DePaul 14,469,813 681,750 -13,788,063 -95.3%
10. Albany 19,114,661 1,952,910 -17,161,751 -89.8%
11. Widener (Commonwealth) 9,036,506 965,862 -8,070,644 -89.3%
12. New York Law School 41,803,974 4,530,080 -37,273,894 -89.2%
13. Northeastern 4,283,568 511,720 -3,771,848 -88.1%
14. Syracuse 8,186,463 1,132,272 -7,054,191 -86.2%
15. Florida Coastal 33,851,726 4,908,200 -28,943,526 -85.5%
16. Duquesne 12,035,146 1,749,704 -10,285,442 -85.5%
17. Ohio Northern 8,637,468 1,301,500 -7,335,968 -84.9%
18. Pacific, McGeorge 11,571,986 1,786,138 -9,785,848 -84.6%
19. Campbell 15,454,205 2,407,975 -13,046,230 -84.4%
20. Regent 2,904,848 453,570 -2,451,278 -84.4%
21. Mercer 15,437,642 2,719,980 -12,717,662 -82.4%
22. Lewis and Clark 8,873,433 1,611,792 -7,261,641 -81.8%
23. Case Western Reserve 8,801,033 1,705,620 -7,095,413 -80.6%
24. St. Louis 18,241,963 3,605,940 -14,636,023 -80.2%
25. Southern California 15,531,071 3,075,166 -12,455,905 -80.2%
26. Charleston 10,513,451 2,206,380 -8,307,071 -79.0%
27. Faulkner 7,911,732 1,822,600 -6,089,132 -77.0%
28. Seton Hall 13,687,741 3,163,116 -10,524,625 -76.9%
29. Southern Methodist 6,211,571 1,448,898 -4,762,673 -76.7%
30. Charlotte 35,712,406 8,517,688 -27,194,718 -76.1%
31. Catholic 10,588,407 2,528,010 -8,060,397 -76.1%
32. Dayton 8,333,640 1,997,240 -6,336,400 -76.0%
33. Wake Forest 7,890,988 1,923,210 -5,967,778 -75.6%
34. Ave Maria 9,074,461 2,293,830 -6,780,631 -74.7%
35. Widener (Delaware) 15,458,193 3,989,430 -11,468,763 -74.2%
36. Western State 5,821,292 1,517,250 -4,304,042 -73.9%
37. Loyola (LA) 15,784,287 4,123,950 -11,660,337 -73.9%
38. Touro 11,489,969 3,078,650 -8,411,319 -73.2%
39. Quinnipiac 4,800,111 1,297,323 -3,502,788 -73.0%
40. Boston University 9,809,602 2,762,480 -7,047,122 -71.8%
41. Gonzaga 4,965,149 1,423,890 -3,541,259 -71.3%
42. Golden Gate 14,318,443 4,263,350 -10,055,093 -70.2%
43. Chicago-Kent, IIT 12,104,788 3,979,870 -8,124,918 -67.1%
44. Pace 11,888,268 3,993,088 -7,895,180 -66.4%
45. Atlanta’s John Marshall 16,084,711 5,613,700 -10,471,011 -65.1%
46. Mississippi College 12,823,594 4,506,420 -8,317,174 -64.9%
47. Washington University 11,705,942 4,181,706 -7,524,236 -64.3%
48. Stetson 22,598,743 8,212,224 -14,386,519 -63.7%
49. Valparaiso 15,710,039 5,732,824 -9,977,215 -63.5%
50. Northwestern 28,591,723 10,570,038 -18,021,685 -63.0%
51. Fordham 38,473,640 14,340,740 -24,132,900 -62.7%
52. Oklahoma City 10,178,065 3,810,630 -6,367,435 -62.6%
53. Elon 3,280,392 1,233,358 -2,047,034 -62.4%
54. Capital 7,447,505 2,820,480 -4,627,025 -62.1%
55. Cardozo, Yeshiva 21,942,175 8,838,095 -13,104,080 -59.7%
56. John Marshall (Chicago) 25,576,716 10,437,840 -15,138,876 -59.2%
57. Villanova 13,909,852 5,785,440 -8,124,412 -58.4%
58. Thomas Jefferson 17,301,310 7,207,200 -10,094,110 -58.3%
59. Samford 11,286,294 4,822,480 -6,463,814 -57.3%
60. Santa Clara 16,091,642 6,913,980 -9,177,662 -57.0%
61. San Diego 19,178,183 8,350,101 -10,828,082 -56.5%
62. Roger Williams 12,099,840 5,362,380 -6,737,460 -55.7%
63. St. John’s 18,866,076 8,366,530 -10,499,546 -55.7%
64. Whittier 13,502,174 5,989,950 -7,512,224 -55.6%
65. Seattle 15,747,526 7,248,700 -8,498,826 -54.0%
66. Creighton 7,850,075 3,625,800 -4,224,275 -53.8%
67. Hofstra 23,812,510 11,012,750 -12,799,760 -53.8%
68. Drexel 2,205,873 1,056,750 -1,149,123 -52.1%
69. Drake 6,852,106 3,342,476 -3,509,630 -51.2%
70. Vanderbilt 5,452,630 2,670,720 -2,781,910 -51.0%
71. Loyola (CA) 29,845,203 14,914,900 -14,930,303 -50.0%
72. Detroit Mercy 15,782,962 7,903,740 -7,879,222 -49.9%
73. Michigan State 12,439,389 6,453,892 -5,985,497 -48.1%
74. Tulane 13,779,350 7,311,590 -6,467,760 -46.9%
75. Barry 6,669,908 3,727,776 -2,942,132 -44.1%
76. Chicago 12,401,406 7,083,930 -5,317,476 -42.9%
77. Arizona Summit [Phoenix] 12,828,297 7,562,152 -5,266,145 -41.1%
78. St. Thomas (FL) 16,799,445 9,990,390 -6,809,055 -40.5%
79. South Texas 17,958,443 10,704,870 -7,253,573 -40.4%
80. Pontifical Catholic 8,442,917 5,132,426 -3,310,491 -39.2%
81. Nova Southeastern 24,168,295 14,852,135 -9,316,160 -38.5%
82. Marquette 11,533,718 7,312,710 -4,221,008 -36.6%
83. Miami 34,008,712 21,832,718 -12,175,994 -35.8%
84. San Francisco 15,483,541 10,028,040 -5,455,501 -35.2%
85. Western New England 3,630,743 2,375,332 -1,255,411 -34.6%
86. Chapman 13,208,102 8,859,600 -4,348,502 -32.9%
87. New England 12,668,264 8,665,140 -4,003,124 -31.6%
88. Suffolk 27,272,730 18,739,094 -8,533,636 -31.3%
89. Cornell 18,586,044 12,775,953 -5,810,091 -31.3%
90. Boston College 16,102,424 11,277,420 -4,825,004 -30.0%
91. Inter American 6,898,330 5,040,051 -1,858,279 -26.9%
92. Loyola (IL) 4,583,328 3,351,312 -1,232,016 -26.9%
93. Southwestern 20,968,555 15,449,600 -5,518,955 -26.3%
94. American 31,922,411 23,868,936 -8,053,475 -25.2%
95. Notre Dame 7,908,972 5,918,036 -1,990,936 -25.2%
96. Denver 17,465,736 14,026,950 -3,438,786 -19.7%
97. Emory 8,896,804 7,211,400 -1,685,404 -18.9%
98. Richmond 7,438,055 6,232,200 -1,205,855 -16.2%
99. Georgetown 52,209,277 43,872,470 -8,336,807 -16.0%
100. Baylor 5,148,380 4,777,042 -371,338 -7.2%
101. St. Mary’s 14,146,074 13,128,560 -1,017,514 -7.2%
102. Columbia 38,452,666 35,989,800 -2,462,866 -6.4%
103. Yale 15,515,266 14,918,850 -596,416 -3.8%
104. New York University 46,942,488 46,870,700 -71,788 -0.2%
105. Pennsylvania 22,739,776 23,802,872 1,063,096 4.7%
106. Willamette 3,947,758 4,251,625 303,867 7.7%
107. George Washington 32,385,362 35,444,670 3,059,308 9.4%
108. Pepperdine 11,117,822 12,539,100 1,421,278 12.8%
109. Harvard 41,997,217 51,660,654 9,663,437 23.0%
110. Duke 3,507,038 5,136,813 1,629,775 46.5%
111. Howard 5,501,024 8,221,176 2,720,152 49.4%
112. Stanford 11,569,636 17,613,762 6,044,126 52.2%
113. Liberty 96,858 189,372 92,514 95.5%
114. La Verne 171,882 3,369,344 3,197,462 1860.3%
115. Belmont 4,805,640 N/A N/A
116. Concordia 203,301 N/A N/A
118. Indiana Tech 94,080 N/A N/A
119. Lincoln Memorial 387,480 N/A N/A
TOTAL 1,672,895,574 849,546,398 -828,839,677 -49.2%
10TH PERCENTILE 4,583,328 203,301 -14,636,023 -89.3%
25TH PERCENTILE 7,890,988 1,822,600 -10,094,110 -76.9%
MEDIAN 12,253,097 4,518,250 -6,759,046 -58.4%
75TH PERCENTILE 17,465,736 8,517,688 -3,438,786 -32.9%
90TH PERCENTILE 29,845,203 14,918,850 -371,338 -3.8%
MEAN 14,674,523 7,199,546 -7,270,523 -36.3%

(Source: ABA, author’s calculations)

Obviously full-time, full-tuition revenue doesn’t tell all of the story—and not just for part-time-focused operations like WMU Cooley—but it definitely illustrates the kind of circumstances many private law schools find themselves in. The same must be true for public law schools. It’s in this context that we can ponder the solvency of other at-risk law schools. Whittier is the first big closure, but it won’t be the last. Universities whose law schools are losing lots of money and have poor employment and bar-passage outcomes are watching Whittier and its neighbors.

LSAT Tea-Leaf Reading: February 2017 Edition

Make that three administrations in a row that the number of LSAT takers has risen. At last, the LSAC has published the results of the February 2017 LSAT. 21,400 people took the test, up 5.4 percent from a year ago (20,301).

The four-period moving sum of LSAT administrations rose 1 percent to 109,354. By comparison, this administration year comes in slightly lower than 2012-13 (112,515). At the same time, the number of applicants is falling from last year, 1.9 percent lower than this time in 2016. As of now 55,100 people are projected to apply to law schools this year, but there may be a late surge in applicants as has tended to be the case in recent years. The number may be higher.

Although I’m still baffled why so many people would be interested in going to law school after such negative news in 2016, it’s even more surprising that more LSATs translates into fewer applicants. Perhaps LSAT takers are more strategic about their scores, which cautions against the hypothesis that the “wrong people” aren’t applying to law school (because, obviously, only high-LSAT scorers make good lawyers). So far, there’s no evidence of a Trump-induced surge in law-school interest. I’m confident that’s premature, but it’s something to bear in mind when the June LSAT takes place.

5 Ways Speaker Ryan Might Change (Law School) Student Loans

Yes, not the Trump era—the Ryan era. Partly we should be clear about who’s really setting any agendas here, but it’s also to recognize that extraconstitutional President D. Trump might not finish his term. The way things have been going since the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s gone by the time you’re reading this.

Moreover, thus far Trump’s sole contribution to student-loan reform has been yet another income-sensitive repayment plan, which was one of the few ideas that he provided any details for during the campaign. As I understand it, his proposal limits the repayment period to 15 years rather than 20, which saves on the net amount debtors pay while increasing their monthly payments. I don’t know if that would require any action by Congress, so I’m sure Betsy DeVos is right on it.

More interesting is why Trump even looks like he cares about student debtors at all. According to the WSJ, for example, they’re the biggest moochers ever, requiring a projected bailout of $100 billion over some number of years. (Never mind that a week later the Defense Department admitted that it wastes $125 billion every five years. Debtors are moochers; the Pentagon, no.) Republicans hate moochers, Trump is a Republican, debtors are moochers; therefore Trump hates debtors. Q.E.D. Maybe Trump sympathizes (if that’s possible) with student debtors because of his frequent bankruptcy filings and probable debts to Vladimir Putin’s buddies. Hey, the syllogism still works if Trump or Republicans are moochers or debtors themselves.

Anyhow, I don’t see student debt on Trump’s agenda such as it is. As I understand it, presidents have a brief window early in their first terms to push their priorities through Congress before their popularity plummets. Trump was never popular, and his popularity is already plummeting, so if student loans were a low priority to begin with, they’ll fall off his list now. Consequently, I think he’ll sign any legislation so long as he can spin it to sound like a victory. This leaves the legislature as the only source of policy. Senate Majority Leader McConnell is too busy looking like a tortoise, so this all falls to the House, which means Ryan.

And Speaker Ryan likes policy. He’s not particularly good at it, but he sounds like he is, so there’s that. Here is where I Ryan might take Congress on student loans:

  1. Nowhere. Ryan and friends are already excited about (a) avoiding their constituents who want to keep their Obamacare, (b) avoiding their constituents who want them to investigate the president’s Russia ties, (c) passing tax cuts for people who don’t need them, (d) passing a budget that slashes all discretionary programs (i.e. “Mr. Rogers’ Privatized Neighborhood“), (e) privatizing Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security/national parks, and (f) dealing with even more blowback from all of the above. If Trump’s conflicts blossom into a constitutional crisis, then we’ll have more entertaining things to think about than student loans.
  2. Adopting fair-value accounting for government credit programs. This is one of Ryan’s few policy positions I agree with, and the Congressional Budget Office does too. (More info here.) There’s long been plenty of liberal opposition to it, but the Republicans might be able to flip the Democratic senators necessary to beat a filibuster. Changing the Federal Credit Reform Act is also sufficiently technical that it will not lead to grassroots mobilization of angry liberals who believe fair-value accounting threatens diversity.
  3. Passing the ExCEL Loan Act. I have no idea where it originally came from, but sometimes even Democrats offer this bill. Its point is that there are too many types of federal loans and too many repayment plans. The ExCEL Loan Act consolidates them, but it also eliminates loan forgiveness features that come with income-sensitive repayment plans.
  4. Capping or eliminating Grad PLUS loans. Supposedly, Ryan doesn’t like the program, and other representatives have grumbled about it, so law schools’ crutch might finally die. The only two reasons to think this might not come about are (a) the diversity crowd, and (b) the for-profit law schools that provide a very important public service—can Ryan resist the siren call of corporate welfare?
  5. Reforming or Eliminating the Department of Education. Maybe something like this could happen if the Democrats do badly in the 2018 midterms—many Senate seats are up—but it depends on how the next two years unfold. Similarly, it’s possible that Republicans will resurrect the guaranteed loan program. Ultimately, there’s a tension between honoring the Bennett hypothesis and giving government revenue to banks.

In the past I’ve said that (4) (Grad PLUS loans) is a likely option, but now I’m not so sure. Nobody expected the election to turn out as it did, but I thought unified Republican governance would be more focused. Yet one month in we have a party that’s stumped on repealing the health care law it’s hated for years and is nowhere near cutting taxes. It’s not implausible, then, that higher education reform is either lower on the agenda or won’t be as decisive as we’d hope.

Speaking of unified governance, a few weeks ago the ABA House of Delegates rejected the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s proposed bar-passage standard for law schools. As with all rulemaking or legislation the dispute isn’t fully resolved, but it’s noteworthy that the section committees that passed the standard are supposed to be the ones captured by student-loan dependent law schools and self-important law professors, while the House of Delegates is independent. Instead, the house is preaching diversity while the section passed a rule mandating accountability. Maybe the house is bad-copping the good-cop section, or the ABA’s politics have gone topsy-turvy as our Putin-loving government’s has.

In context, the bar-passage standard appeared to be the only viable idea out of the ABA that would shut down the most superfluous law schools. Given that the number of applicants is flat, and assuming policy is still gridlocked, it seems we’re in for more of the same for the next few years.