Law Schools

Breaking News: Law School Tuition Still Too High

We can also be sure that continuing tuition increases demonstrate just how dysfunctional the law school market remains, despite increased transparency.

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Okay, so that’s not breaking news. But with the ABA’s annual law school data dump last week, we have another year of tuition data to analyze.

Let’s start with the basics.

Tuition has increased each year as far back as we can see. Some point out that tuition discounts increased too, but more than one-third of students enrolled at ABA-approved law schools are paying full price this year. With scholarships predominately provided in exchange for relatively higher LSAT scores and GPAs, the weakest one-third subsidizes the strongest two-thirds.

Despite worse outcomes across the board, the for-profit schools are priced on par with private schools. Since the admissions market softened, for-profit schools have been less able to increase tuition as quickly as they did in the wake of the recession — when law school enrollment peaked. Between 2008 and 2015, for-profit schools increased tuition 35.5% compared to 27.7% at private schools. The change since last year was 2.5% at private schools and 1.9% at for-profit schools.

The story at public law schools is both gloomier and rosier. On the one hand, tuition has increased substantially at public schools — especially for residents. Some schools have more than doubled their price since 2008. On the other hand, the actual numbers are on average lower. Resident tuition is more than 40% less than tuition at a private school.

Lower Tuition

Tuition at only two private schools is lower in 2015 than in 2008. You can add only four more schools to that list by accounting for CPI inflation (11%). No public school has lower resident tuition than in 2008, although inflation-adjusted tuition is lower at the University of Toledo and the University of Montana.

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Job Outcomes and Bar Passage Rates

In some sense, the distinction between public, private, and for-profit schools does not matter. Outcomes are outcomes. These distinctions nevertheless provide a convenient way to group schools because prices based on state residency otherwise muck up comparisons between schools.

Instead, let’s group public and private schools by job outcomes and bar passage rates. Here I use the latest job outcome data (class of 2014) and count a job only if it is a long-term, full-time job that requires bar passage or for which the JD is an advantage. I’ll also use the latest bar passage rates available (2014) directly from the ABA.

For both job and bar passage outcome categories, we can split schools into three groups: <67%, 67% – 80%, > 80%.

At all schools, a student typically pays more for better job and bar passage outcomes. (Note that the better bar passage outcomes are likely not a credit to the school but greater test-taking aptitude of the students it attracts, perhaps due to better job outcomes.) But once the job and bar passage rates dip below 80%, the prices are quite similar. The schools with the best job outcomes are about 20% more costly.

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A less predictable pattern emerges when examining tuition increases. Over the past year, private law schools with better job outcomes raised tuition more than schools with worse job outcomes. That’s predictable. There’s greater attention to job outcomes these days, thus these schools can attract more applicants. With greater demand comes higher prices.

However, the opposite was true at public schools. The public schools with worse bar passage rates increased tuition more quickly than those with better bar passage rates. The pattern is not linear if you look at post-recession tuition change, although public school tuition increased considerably less (but still a lot) at the schools with the best bar passage rates. This may indicate resource issues at this slice of public schools, but there’s not yet enough information to make sweeping conclusions.

What we can be sure of is that law school is still too expensive and that prospective students are still turning away in large numbers. We can also be sure that continuing tuition increases demonstrate just how dysfunctional the law school market remains, despite increased transparency.

Kyle McEntee is the executive director of Law School Transparency, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to make entry to the legal profession more transparent, affordable, and fair. LST publishes the LST Reports and produces I Am The Law, a podcast about law jobs. You can follow him on Twitter @kpmcentee and@LSTupdates.

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