David Frakt on His Shorter Than Expected Presentation at Florida Coastal School of Law

Yes, it is true.  As the recent story in the Atlantic by Paul Campos accurately reports, I was the dean candidate who was asked to leave Florida Coastal School of Law by school President Dennis Stone in the middle of my presentation to the faculty.  Since the story came out, I’ve been contacted by many law faculty members wanting to know the whole story.  I’ve also seen a fair amount of uninformed speculation on the topic floating around the blogosphere.  So, I have decided to write about what happened in the hopes that I can put all the speculation to rest and move on.

Let me start by saying that just because I appear in Paul Campos’ article does not mean that I endorse Paul Campos’ point of view about Florida Coastal School of Law, InfiLaw, for-profit law schools, or the “law school scam” theory in general.  I believe Paul raises a lot of serious and important issues, and makes several valid points, but the views expressed in the article are his, not mine.  Dan Filler has graciously offered me the opportunity to expand on my own views on legal education here at The Faculty Lounge, and I will do so in future posts.  (And thank you for the kind introduction, Dan.)

I also want to make it clear at the outset that I do not agree with the view expressed by some commentators that Florida Coastal School of Law, Charlotte Law, or Arizona Summit School of Law are “diploma mills.”  I believe that each of these schools provides a solid legal education, on par with many of their peer schools.  The truth is that the faculty hiring market has become so competitive that all three of these schools have been able to hire many highly qualified and distinguished lawyers and scholars as faculty members.  I have friends on the faculty of all three schools whom I know to be fine teachers and scholars who would be a credit to any law school faculty in the country.  I have seen no evidence that the educational program at InfiLaw is any less rigorous than the typical J.D. program.  There is no question that all three InfiLaw schools have produced many fine attorneys, a substantial majority of whom passed the bar on the first attempt.   My concern about InfiLaw has primarily to do with its admissions policies over the last four years.  During this time, InfiLaw schools have admitted hundreds of students with extremely low LSAT scores and mediocre GPAs.  This clearly appears to be an administrative policy as the admission numbers look very similar at all three of their schools.  I do not believe that InfiLaw has any special insight that would enable them to identify students with extremely low LSAT scores who have much greater aptitude for the study of law than their test scores and GPAs would indicate.  Nor do I believe that InfiLaw schools have any magic formula for getting students of marginal aptitude to outperform their indicators.  InfiLaw schools are not notably better or worse or different than the many other unranked law schools around the country, aside from their for-profit status.

  

As to their for-profit status, I don’t believe there is an inherent, unresolvable conflict between for-profit education and quality education.  Certainly, the pressure to generate profits can create a tension, but as long as the profit demands are not unreasonable or unrealistic under current market conditions, then the tension is manageable.  A number of traditional colleges and universities have created law  schools over the past several decades motivated at least in part by the hope that law school income would alleviate financial pressures in other programs.  There is no reason why a law school providing a quality education shouldn’t be able to provide a reasonable return on investment both to its students and its owners.  I was on the faculty at another for-profit law school, Western State University College of Law, (now part of Argosy University) and I believe we managed to provide a very good legal education.  While I was there, the school earned full ABA accreditation, and I don’t believe the ABA simply gave us a pass. To the contrary, the inspection process was very rigorous and thorough.  In fact, the ABA had previously revoked Western State’s provisional accreditation because of unacceptably low bar pass rates.  The administration and the faculty instituted a rigorous and comprehensive program to improve the bar pass rate which resulted in highly competitive statistical success even with the demanding California bar standards.  I don’t believe that the ABA accreditation process for any of the InfiLaw schools was a simple rubber stamp either.  But if the ABA is not vigilant, a school can very easily backslide on the promises it has made regarding admissions during the accreditation process.  Due to the three to four year delay from the time of admissions until bar results are reported, it can be quite a while before anyone from the ABA takes notice that something is amiss.  I believe this is precisely what has happened at InfiLaw. 

Despite my misgivings, I would not have interviewed for the Deanship at Florida Coastal School of Law if I didn’t believe that, with the right leadership, the school could provide a quality, good-value education and make a positive contribution to the Jacksonville community.   The Chair of the Dean Search committee was MaryAnn Jones, my former Dean at Western State, whom I admire and respect.  I considered her involvement in the process as a positive sign that InfiLaw was looking for a Dean who could help Florida Coastal get on a sustainable footing and improve the quality and reputation of the school.  I was also impressed to find that InfiLaw had recently hired Kenneth Randall, the long-time Dean of the University of Alabama Law School, as the President of the InfiLaw consortium of law schools.  I took this as another sign that InfiLaw was seriously committed to quality legal education.

My father, Arthur Frakt, had a lengthy career as a law professor and dean and my mother was also a law school teacher, so it was only natural that I have had a long term interest in both law teaching and administration. When I was informed that I was a finalist at FCSL, I was excited and took the opportunity quite seriously. I prepared very diligently, reading everything available on the school’s website, including all the mandatory ABA disclosures. I requested additional materials including the school’s most recent ABA self-study. The self-study referenced annual employee satisfaction surveys, and I requested copies of those as well.   

As I reviewed the materials about FCSL, I became very concerned about the downward trend of the entrance credentials of their students.  As everyone in legal academia knows, law school applications have been in a tailspin since 2010.  This has required virtually every law school in the country, other than perhaps the top few schools, to make a choice: either lower the entrance credentials for admission or shrink the class, or some combination of the two.  The problem of the shrinking applicant pool has been particularly acute for schools at the bottom of the law school hierarchy.  These law schools have finely calibrated their admission policies to provide an opportunity for students of modest ability while still ensuring that the schools’ ultimate bar passage rate would still be at an acceptable level.  Such law schools understood that they had little room to lower their admission standards if they were to comply in good faith with ABA Standard 501(b) “A law school shall not admit applicants who do not appear capable of satisfactorily completing its educational program and being admitted to the bar.”

In addition to the self-serving concern about keeping their accreditation, I believe most law schools are deeply concerned about being fair to their applicants, and not admitting a student who is likely to fail law school or the bar after incurring significant debt.  I believe most “opportunity” law schools strive to find an appropriate ethical balance between giving students a chance to pursue their dream of becoming an attorney and having sufficiently selective admission standards to ensure that those who matriculate have a legitimate chance of succeeding.   As I looked at the entrance credentials for FCSL, I became convinced that the school was not striking the proper balance, and that the admission standards had become too lax.  One statistic that particularly struck me is that FCSL had continued to grow the entering class even after applications started to drop off.   For example, in 2010, FCSL enrolled an entering class of 755 (!) students, up 33 from the year before, while their entering LSAT scores dropped across the board at the 75^th, 50^th and 25^th percentiles.  This suggested to me that growth (i.e. profits) was driving admission strategies.  Not surprisingly, the bar results for the summer of 2013, when most of those who entered in the fall of 2010 sat for the test, dropped significantly, falling below 70% for the first time in several years, to 67%. This rate was 10% below the state average and 12% below the average for Florida schools. 

Unfortunately, in each of the next three years, Florida Coastal further dropped its admission standards to the point that the entering class of 2013 had perhaps unprecedentedly low scores.  According to Florida Coastal’s mandatory ABA disclosures, the LSAT breakdown of their 2013 entering class was as follows: 148/144/141 25%/50%/75%.  To place these scores in context, a 148 is at the 36^th percentile of test takers. A 144 is at the 23^rd percentile and a 141 is at the 15^th percentile.  Shockingly, Florida Coastal actually admitted and matriculated several students with scores in the 130s.  When I visited FCSL in the spring, they were projecting that the fall 2014 entering class would have similar credentials.

In my presentation, I compared Florida Coastal’s LSAT numbers to several peer schools in the region.  While all of these schools had lowered their admission standards slightly in response to the decrease in applications, none of them had dropped their standards nearly as dramatically as Florida Coastal. I noted that none of these schools were taking significant numbers of students with LSATs at 144 and below.

I fully understand the limitations of LSAT scores as predictors of ultimate success. That being said, LSAT scores are the best predictors available, especially when combined with UGPA, and are relied upon heavily by virtually every law school admissions office in the country. While applicants with modest test scores often excel both in law school and in practice, there is a point below which the lack of aptitude for legal studies and legal reasoning are highly predictive of failure.  Individuals with very low scores are well advised to consider careers better suited to their abilities and talents.  I believe in the “whole person” concept and think it is perfectly fine to admit some exceptional applicants with less than stellar test scores.  But while it may be reasonable to admit a few students with low LSAT scores who have other qualities that suggest a likelihood of success, such as cultural or language barriers or other personal challenges that have been overcome, it is a legitimate cause for concern when a school admits hundreds of students with extremely low entrance credentials. 

I have spent several years studying the correlation between LSAT scores, undergraduate grades, and law school success and bar passage.  Of course there are exceptional individuals who outperform their predictors, just as there are those who underperform their predictors. And, certainly, law schools have an obligation to take somewhat greater risks with students who belong to underrepresented communities.  Based on my experience teaching at a wide range of schools, and my study of LSAC publications and other scholarship in the area, I have determined the following rough breakdown of LSAT scores in relation to chances of success in law school and on the bar:

 

LSAT Scores 

156+ High Aptitude/Minimal Risk

153-5   Solid Aptitude/Low Risk

150-152 (44-52%) Reasonable Aptitude/Modest Risk

147-149 (33-40%) Modest Aptitude/High Risk

145-146 (26-30%) Marginal Aptitude/Very High Risk

144 and below (>23%) Poor Aptitude/Extreme Risk

I presented this table at Florida Coastal during my discussion with the faculty.  I explained that, according to my interpretation of LSAT scores, this placed over half of the students in the 2013 entering class at FCSL in the “extreme risk” of failure category.  Even the top quartile of students were, in my view, at high risk of failure.  In my talk, I suggested that it was unfair, ethically questionable, and a potential violation of ABA standards to admit students with such poor aptitude for the study of law.  Furthermore, a policy that resulted in the matriculation of a class made up almost entirely of high to extremely high risk students was a recipe for disaster for the school’s bar passage rates.  Another concern that I raised was that the mandatory grading curve put in place when the entering classes had much stronger credentials might be unsuitable for students with far lower predictors, and might have the unintended effect of forcing grade inflation.  Based upon long-standing ABA accreditation practices, I predicted that to continue the current admission practices, exacerbated by substantial transfer attrition from the top of the class, would lead to bar passage rates that might result in being placed on probation by the ABA.  I further predicted that if FCSL were placed on probation, many students in good standing would seek to transfer and applications from qualified prospective students would decline very rapidly, resulting in further significant faculty reductions, and raising questions about institutional viability.

Although the focus of my presentation was on admissions and its potential effect on the bar passage rate, I also identified several other problems at FCSL in my talk, including downward trends in the number of applications, post-graduate employment rates, transfer attrition and employee job satisfaction and morale.  Through my comments and visual aids, I sought to demonstrate that the school faced a severe crisis and needed to rapidly change course.  I emphasized that these problems, though severe, were not insurmountable.  I intended to explain how my experience, particularly at Western State, would help me lead the faculty to reverse these negative trends and put the school on a path to sustainable success, but unfortunately I was denied that opportunity.

I will not speculate on the reasons that President Stone demanded that I end my presentation and leave the campus. Suffice it to say that I did not say anything that should have been offensive or insulting to any member of the faculty, nor did I say or do anything that warranted my expulsion from the campus.  I would have no objection to FCSL releasing the video recording of my presentation so that any interested party could judge for themselves, but it seems unlikely that this will happen.  Although President Stone apparently concluded that I was not a good fit for the position, I am hopeful that my aborted presentation, and the recent Atlantic article and the conversation it has generated, will lead FCSL and their sister InfiLaw schools to closely evaluate their admission practices. 

Comments

[anon]

"I believe that each of these schools provides a solid legal education, on par with many of their peer schools.” Nice. Diploma mills on par with their peer diploma mills. I see what you did there.

Oh, yea; I’m not clear on “'opportunity' law schools.” Could you explain what the "opportunity" is? And if “opportunity” = "statistical chance,” how would that “opportunity” statistically vary from going to the nearest roulette table in Jacksonville and putting $200K-which would otherwise be tuition, cost of living (not to mention opportunity cost) and other sundries-on red? Compared to FCSL’s FT/LT Bar Passage Required figures, I’m sure many of its debtors (i.e. former students who sought to use their JDs) would have been happy to have taken a gamble as (relatively) safe as a 47/53 shot.

Honestly, I’m eager to hear the defense of FCSL. I’m intrigued by any defense of an institution that can’t make it into the top 75% of other institutions.

[John Kunich]

I concur with Professor Frakt's analysis. My experience with Dennis Stone and the InfiLaw System strongly corroborates the conclusion that the quest for profit far outweighs any and all other considerations. The InfiLaw schools' supposed commitment to "serving the underserved" and producing "practice-ready" graduates cannot be reconciled with their admissions and retention policies.

Dennis Stone (law librarian-cum-"Interim Dean" and "President" of two InfiLaw schools) can scream at newspaper reporters, publicly insult faculty members, and eject a qualified dean-candidate in mid-presentation, but his juvenile antics won't change the facts. The InfiLaw schools, stuffed with hundreds of students whose LSAT scores fall into Frakt's "extreme risk" category, can try to delude applicants with the illusion that they have a good chance of graduating, passing the bar, and securing employment sufficiently lucrative to enable them to repay their enormous student-loan debt. But will that ever happen, in reality? As Hemmingway wrote, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

[JM]

David: Thanks for the very interesting first-hand report. It appears you recognize that FCSL has no standards in its admissions policy, that its exclusive, goal is to make money, and that they were disrespectful to you for pointing out the truth. Yet, you somehow still support these institutions. Why not just recognize that the top 100 or so law schools could supply the US with more than enough attorneys, along with a few to spare, and that Infilaw is just a scam without any redeeming value?

[Anon]

I am very pleased that Professor Frakt has shared his thoughts on this issue, but I am amazed at his conclusions. The data shows that FCSL admits a class in the "extreme risk" category for bar pass, and he admits that faculty have no role in admission policies ("My concern about InfiLaw has primarily to do with its admissions policies over the last four years. During this time, InfiLaw schools have admitted hundreds of students with extremely low LSAT scores and mediocre GPAs. This clearly appears to be an administrative policy as the admission numbers look very similar at all three of their schools.").

Yet Frakt concludes: "As to their for-profit status, I don’t believe there is an inherent, unresolvable conflict between for-profit education and quality education." Actually, that conclusion is exactly what your data shows - that the for-profit nature of FCSL leadership have made choices entirely inconsistent with quality education. In fact, that is the ONLY conclusion I can reach, having read his analysis.

Why the disconnect, Professor Frakt? Isnt it the for-profit status of the school that leads the administration to admit poorly qualified, high- or extreme-risk students, when it is clear that that is a poor idea, considering bar pass three years hence? Why else would they do it?

Finally, on another topic - I would like to hear more about the employee surveys, because with this level of faculty governance (zero), I would be surprised if morale was anything but abysmal (zero). Am I right?

[twbb]

Well to be fair, he says explicitly that FCSL gives quality education; I think his point is that such an education probably does not help someone who scored a 135 on the LSAT.

[Barry]

Seconding Anon here - Dan, you did a very dishonest mid-argument switch, analagous to Deans who defend law schools by switching between 'employment' rates, 'average salaries' (for those who got real jobs) and 'median lawyer salaries' (ignoring the massive failure rate at the start, and the massive failure rate in the first several years).

Also: " I have seen no evidence that the educational program at InfiLaw is any less rigorous than the typical J.D. program. "

The market has something to say about that, and what it says is that InfiLaw schools are very, very bad. They rank very low on the job stats, ***far below*** the 'typical' JD program.

[BoredJD]

Federal regulations define a "diploma mill" is any school that offers fake degrees. Obviously, none of the ABA law schools do that. But in the law school context, students and young grads use the term "diploma mill" to describe a school that is expensive and graduates far more JDs than there are jobs (that can service the debt) for them. This has nothing to do with the quality of the education or the pedigree of the faculty. By any rational measure, a school with a 29.5% FTLT JD employment score that costs 246K all-in (before schollies) meets that standard.

I'm unsure why you think for-profit law schools will be able to divorce themselves from putting profit before students in the long-run. Compared with established schools, they are never going to be able to deliver good job outcomes for students at a low price when because employers do not hire based on "quality" of the education, whatever that means. Even if they did, it's unlikely that any law school could produce a "quality" education that is so above and beyond what other schools provide that it turns clay into superstar lawyers. That non-profit law schools and universities act so much like profit-making industries is a sad commentary on how much the for-profit mentality has infected our higher ed system. It's not carte blanche to keep squeezing young people.

[David Frakt]

Dear Readers:

I have said what I wanted to say about Florida Coastal and InfiLaw and am going to try to refrain from replying directly to comments or questions on this thread. In the coming days, I will post some of my thoughts about legal education in general which will touch upon many of the issues and themes being raised in the comments.

Thank you.

David Frakt

[Just saying...]

Just one question, Prof. Frakt: Did you formally contact the ABA Section of Legal Ed about your treatment and provide them with the data you presented to the faculty and your conclusions on what that data indicates for FCLS students' future success?

Seems to me it the accreditation process is to have any credibility, the Section should be sending in one of its SWAT teams ASAP.

[matt]

I don't understand why Mr. Frakt would not have similar concerns about the institution where he teaches. He is a professor at Barry University's school of law where, according the Law School Transparency, the median LSAT score is 147 and the 25th percentile is 145. Moreover the median GPA is 2.9 and the 25th percentile is 2.6.

Not surprisingly, Barry also has poor employment outcomes. According to Barry's website, only 83 out of 201 2013 graduates got jobs requiring a JD. Moreover, 14 of these jobs were as solo practitioners and 37 were in firms of 2 to 10 people. 31 were unemployed and employment status was unknown for 43. Tuition is approximately $38,000 per year.

[David Frakt]

I have not been employed by Barry Law School since May 2012. I am not sure why my faculty bio is still on their website.

[David Frakt]

Dear Readers,

I do not want to discourage continuing comments on this thread. If you use a real e-mail address when you post, I promise I will reply to your questions and comments privately. Otherwise, I will try to address the issues raised in my future postings.

Regards,

David Frakt

[anon123]

I am curious if anyone has data by school on whether admitted students took the LSAT more than once, and whether they used a commercial prep service.

[Anon]

The attack on for profit schools would possibly carry more weight if it was not also the case that the same people who criticize that model apply the same kinds of arguments against startup schools like U.C. Irvine.

It is also odd that the critics argue vociferously for more practical faculty yet attack schools like the for profits that likely have far higher proportions of faculty who actually practice law while teaching.

[antiro]

I'm very interested in the Colonel's perspective. I would like him to expound on the value proposition of low-ranked private law schools which routinely indebt their graduates well over $100,000 for poor job odds.

He writes that he doesn't see a big difference between for-profits and non-profits on the low ranked end, and I agree. Law schools, regardless of tax status, have behaved exactly the same in raising tuition extremely high and accepting graduates of increasingly lower and lower GPA and LSAT scores. This wouldn't be an issue if all law schools had good job prospects that included good salary-debt ratios and good bar passage rates, but this isn't the case.

[Barry]

Steven Diamond (or Brian Leiter, or one of any number of wh*resons): "The attack on for profit schools would possibly carry more weight if it was not also the case that the same people who criticize that model apply the same kinds of arguments against startup schools like U.C. Irvine.

It is also odd that the critics argue vociferously for more practical faculty yet attack schools like the for profits that likely have far higher proportions of faculty who actually practice law while teaching."

No, it's not. People are protesting against garbage schools with high tuition.

[anon]

I'm not sure what threads "Anon" follows. I haven't seen anyone attacking UC Irvine on the basis that it admits unqualified students, from whom it extracts inflated tuition, knowing these students will have poor employment prospects while saddled with six figure debt. I haven't seen anyone state that UC Irvine thus operates unethically and in violation of ABA standards.

But, Anon has, apparently.

Anon also thinks that the faculties at "for profit" law schools "practice law while teaching."

Anon, please name ten faculty members at "for profit" law schools who "practice law while teaching."

[anon]

Last “anon,”

About teaching while practicing; this is a red herring. An argument that the TTTT establishment is worthless does not rely upon evidence that TTTT faculty practices while teaching.

TTTT faculties are worthless because they can’t do anything, on the whole, to increase the FT/LT JD required prospects or their pupils.

Fix the employment outcomes of low-ranked schools, and nobody will care about the LSAT/GPA inputs factors, nor extracurricular activities, of faculty at the TTTT schools.

[Secretion Diaz]

Frakt was lucky enough to escape from Barely Law School. Not sure why someone so qualified would want to work at these loser TTTT schools.

[anon]

anon | August 19, 2014 at 07:33 PM

I was responding to Anon, who stated:

"It is also odd that the critics argue vociferously for more practical faculty yet attack schools like the for profits that likely have far higher proportions of faculty who actually practice law while teaching."