Law Professors, Law Schools

Suffolk Law Offers More Buyouts Than Harvard, Yale, And Columbia Combined

It turns out that subway ads cannot turn around a law school.

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The results are in. It turns out that a snazzy, mass-transit ad campaign mocking elites is not enough to turn around an entire law school. Law school applications are down because law school isn’t a good value, not because law school hasn’t been correctly marketed to prospective students.

It looks like Suffolk Law is going to have to face the music. The university has already replaced its president. Now the law school is offering buyouts to tenured faculty and professors with renewable contracts…

What’s funny is how Suffolk is still adopting the “nothing to see here” media approach to its declining fortunes. Check out this excerpt from the Boston Globe:

The unexpected change in leadership comes as Suffolk seeks to stabilize its finances and attract students in the college-dense region. Facing a decline in enrollment and revenue, the university announced in June it would freeze employee salaries for the next fiscal year. It also offered buyouts to all law school faculty members with tenure or renewable long-term contracts….

University officials, however, defended the school’s financial standing Wednesday, noting that the endowment has grown by 52 percent since 2011, and its operating surplus has increased.

Look, universities on sound financial footing don’t offer to buy out all of their tenured law professors. That’s not how it works.

Note that it’s unlikely that any cost savings Suffolk Law generates from cutting professors will be passed along to students. Suffolk Law charges $45,922 per year. Who pays that? Who is going to want to pay that next year after the school finishes eviscerating its faculty? I think that we’re well beyond the point where people commit $45K a year because they saw an ad on the T.

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By the way, sucks to be law faculty at Suffolk. Good luck to the professors and students who will now pay for years of administrators hoping the law school shuffle could go on forever.

Suffolk University abruptly replaces president [Boston Globe]
Holy law school fail, Batman! Suffolk offers to buy out its whole law faculty [Professor Bainbridge]

Earlier: This Law School Is Looking For The Dumbest Possible Students

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