Amid Stark Enrollment Decline, Law School Offers Buyouts To All Tenured Faculty

Which law school may soon have fewer tenured professors?

For years now, when faced with cash crunches, deans at some law schools have allowed their admissions standards to fall to the wayside rather than deal a blow to their budgets. Considering the precipitous drop in bar exam passage over the past two years, it’s evident that this wasn’t a very good strategy. On the other side of the coin, we have law schools that have been forced to make significant cuts to their own tenured faculty in order to keep their incoming students’ credentials from becoming laughable.

It’s been quite some time since we’ve written about law school buyouts, but it seems that one law school waited until now to decide that it was stuck in a completely untenable situation. Which law school may soon have fewer tenured professors?

It’s Gonzaga University School of Law, and between 2011 and 2014, its applicant pool has dropped by 36 percent, while its total enrollment has declined by 28 percent over the same time period. First-year law student enrollment at Gonzaga Law was at 125 students in 2014, compared to 183 in 2010, which represents a drop of 32 percent overall.

As you can see, throughout the law school enrollment crisis, entering students’ admissions profiles have remained roughly the same at Gonzaga Law. Unfortunately, refusing to take on students who were riskier bets came at a cost. What’s the solution?

Dean Jane Korn has offered buyouts to all of the law school’s tenured faculty in the hope of avoiding having to lower Gonzaga Law’s standards for admission. Seventeen tenured faculty members received Korn’s offer, and four have accepted thus far.

Here’s some additional information on Gonzaga Law’s problems from Inlander:

Law school dean Jane Korn does not anticipate the need to cut any more positions.

“Nationally, since 2011, applications to law schools have dropped around 40 percent,” Korn says. “Every dean had to make a decision to lower standards or take a budget hit, and we decided to take the budget hit.”

Korn declined to give the law school’s budget, but says the school is staffed for a student body of 525 students (175 per class).

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Gonzaga Law may be taking a hit right now, but Dean Korn says it’s for a reason: “We’re doing this because when you look at the situation ahead, you want to make sure Gonzaga has a bright and successful future. We did this to avoid problems in the future.”

While we understand that Dean Korn needs to look out for the ultimate safety of the law school, perhaps it would behoove her keep her graduates in mind. While 56.8 percent of Gonzaga Law’s most recent graduating class is employed in full-time jobs where bar passage is required, only a handful of them are employed in jobs that can support their outsized law school debts. Perhaps the school’s next step should be to lower tuition.

Why Gonzaga University School of Law offered buy-outs to its tenured professors [Inlander]
Amidst 32% Enrollment Decline, Gonzaga Law School Offers Buyouts To All 17 Tenured Faculty (4 Accept) [TaxProf Blog]

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