Back in January, I wrote a post which was critical of the feeble attempts by the Chair (Justice Rebecca Berch) and Managing Director (Barry Currier) of the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education to explain the Council’s abject failure to curb the obviously exploitative admission practices at several ABA law schools.
In the post, I used the example of Valparaiso Law School:
Consider the example of Valparaiso Law School. In 2013, their median LSAT was 143, the median GPA was 3.0 and their 25% percentile was 141 and 2.75%. With an entering class of 208, that meant they matriculated over one hundred students with LSATs in the bottom 20% of test takers, and over 50 from the bottom 15%. Anyone scoring at this level is statistically likely to fail the bar (and keep in mind that schools report the high LSAT score of an applicant, not the average, which is a more accurate predictor). Are we to seriously believe that Valpo’s admissions process was able to find over 100 students whose applications suggested that they were likely to outperform their predictors? Incidentally, Valpo admitted over 81% of the applicants that year, so it was hardly applying intense scrutiny. The reason I single out Valparaiso is that Valpo had an accreditation visit from the ABA April 6-9, 2014, which it apparently passed with flying colors despite these horrifying admissions numbers. This does not inspire confidence in the accreditation process. And this was not a one-time aberration for Valparaiso. In 2014, Valpo’s entering class shrank to 174, but their bottom 25% was still 141 and 2.77, and for their part-time division, the LSAT 25% was even lower. For 2015, the LSAT 25% went up a point to 142, but the 25% GPA dropped to 2.64. So, for at least 3 years, Valparaiso’s admission practices have been clearly exploitative. Yet according to Justice Berch, it is not reasonable to expect any law schools to be sanctioned anytime soon because the Council “cannot act precipitously."
A recent article in the New York Times highlights why the ABA should have taken action years ago, offering a dismaying portrait of what a disaster Valpo has become in recent years, with hordes of students failing the bar, and large numbers of graduates unable to find a decent job to pay off their enormous debt burdens. The article includes some very revealing quotes from former Associate Dean Bruce Berner, who retired in 2014:
For Valparaiso, the bottom fell out in two stages. Applications dropped from over 3,000 in 2007 to under 1,600 in 2009, although this was partly because of a change in recruitment strategy, then below 1,200 a few years later.
After this second drop, faculty members and administrators became anxious. “I was chair of the admissions committee and we’re sitting there watching this,” Mr. Berner said. “It’s a mess.”
The committee agonized over whether it should accept fewer students or keep its class size roughly constant and admit weaker candidates. In the end, it opted for the latter, a decision Mr. Berner admits wasn’t entirely on the merits, since fewer students would have meant less revenue.
“There was a lot of pressure, of course, from the central administration to keep the numbers up,” he said.
. . . Mr. Berner, for his part, feels a tinge of regret when he looks back on the years after the 2009 recession. “Everyone had good intentions,” he said. “If we could go back, I think we should have erred a little more on the side of turning people down.”
According to the New York Times article, the school has now dramatically shrunk its entering class, and drastically cut its faculty and staff. One might assume from these facts that Valpo has significantly tightened its admission standards. Indeed, current Dean Andrea Lyon is quoted in the story as saying, “I don’t think it’s moral to take someone’s money who can’t make it,”. . . “It’s just wrong.” While I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, there is little evidence that Valpo is now operating on the moral high ground. As the article notes, Valpo is still "taking risks on a lot of students." Summing up Valpo's situation succinctly, the article states:: "Schools like Valparaiso essentially face the following choice: Admit a large number of marginal students, or shut down."
A review of Valpo's ABA Standard 509 reports reveals that Valpo has chosen to continue to pursue the marginal student option, and that their admission standards have barely improved at all. In 2013, they were at 148/143/141 LSAT and 3.33/3.00/2.75 GPA with an entering class of 208. In 2014, they shrank to 174 entering students and there was a very slight uptick in entrance credentials with a 149/145/141 LSAT and 3.33/3.10/2.77 GPA. But for 2015, despite shrinking to 130 entering students, admission standards were essentially flat with LSATs of 148/145/142 and GPAs down across the board at 3.27/2.93/2.64. Of course, it is possible that Valpo is tightening the standards for the unreported bottom 24% of the class, and there is some evidence that they are being somewhat more selective in their admissions process. In 2013, Valpo accepted 81% of applicants. In 2014, the school accepted 77% of applicants, and in 2015, they accepted only 66% of the 928 applicants. But despite this increase in selectivity, over half the matriculating class is still at very high or extremely high risk of failure, based on their entrance credentials.
According to Dean Lyon “I don’t think we should stop taking chances; I just think we need to take chances intelligently and thoughtfully.” What is Dean Lyon's magic formula? How does she know which 142/2.64 student has what it takes and deserves a chance? According to the NY Times, Dean Lyon can just tell: “If you’ve taught for any length of time, you know pretty quickly if someone has that hunger to do a good job. That makes up for a lot.” Even if we were to accept this "Hunger Games" theory, this would suggest that Valpo should be attriting large numbers of non-hungry students after the first semester. But the 2015 509 Report indicates that only 3 first year students were academically attrited in the previous year. It would appear that Valpo's Hunger Games aren't eliminating contestants nearly as efficiently as Dean Lyon's quote would suggest.
Given that a senior Valparaiso administrator has essentially admitted to past financially driven non-compliance with ABA Standard 501(b) (the rule that requires that law schools not admit students who do not appear capable of earning a J.D. and passing the bar), and the lack of evidence of significant self-correction, the ABA should not continue to give Valpo a free pass. But if past experience is any guide, the ABA will do nothing. In the ABA's Hunger Games, it's okay for law graduates to go hungry, as long as law professors and administrators continue to be well-fed.
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