Law Schools

Big Ten University Purchases Online Law School With Abysmal Bar Passage Rates

This school has low tuition and even lower bar exam passage rates...

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law keyboardWhile some law schools are faltering, others are making great strides in attempts to solidify their legitimacy. When faced with dismal first-time bar exam passage rates and ever-declining enrollment, the current trend in legal education — with regard to for-profit law schools, at least — seems to be some sort of a savior model, where schools with an unsteady footing in the marketplace seek out rescue and bailouts by nonprofit universities.

This trend was set in motion by the for-profit Infilaw System, with Arizona Summit Law School, Charlotte School of Law, and Florida Coastal School of Law each making it known that they were in search of non-profit universities to purchase or affiliate with their schools. Thus far, only Arizona Summit has been publicly successful in this venture, announcing an affiliation with Bethune-Cookman University, in early March.

This trend has now moved to the virtual space. Late last week, Purdue University announced that it would be purchasing Kaplan University, and with it, America’s oldest online law school, the Concord Law School. Purdue paid just $1 to purchase Kaplan University from its parent company Graham Holdings Co., and a subsidiary of Kaplan Inc. will run the programs offered for 30 years in exchange for 12.5 percent of all revenue all academic programming will be run by the yet-to-be-named university at Purdue. As reported by Karen Sloan at Law.com, things are looking up for the school:

purdueIn the short term, the school’s administrators, legal program and course offerings will stay the same, as will the day-to-day operations, said Concord dean Martin Pritikin.

The move is expected to add credibility to Concord’s program, especially should it be renamed to reflect Purdue’s ownership. It also could be a boost to the small industry of online law programs, which like traditional law schools, has suffered waning interest in recent years.

“Certainly, being affiliated with Purdue, which has a well-deserved national reputation, could only mean good things for us,” Pritikin said. “It might make people more willing to give us a second look.”

There are several problems here, and the most important one is the fact that fully online J.D. programs are currently ineligible for accreditation by the ABA. Because Concord Law is unaccredited, its graduates have incredibly limited opportunities to sit for a state bar examination. In fact, there is only one state in the country that allows graduates of unaccredited, online law schools to sit for the bar exam after graduation, and that’s California. Graduates of Concord Law had a very poor showing during the July 2016 administration of the California bar exam, with an overall passage rate of just 16 percent. Only 27 percent of first-time takers from the school passed the test last summer.

That leads us to the next problem: geography. Purdue University is located in Indiana, and while the Concord Law program is fully online, students from the Midwestern region may apply to the big-name university’s new J.D. program in droves in the hope of completing the low-cost law degree. A degree from Concord currently costs about $50,000, which is about $100,000 less expensive than the majority of all law degrees. Upon graduation, students from Purdue’s virtual law school who are based in the Midwest will have to travel about 1,800 miles to sit for an exam that they’re then unlikely to pass. It’s also worth noting that because Concord is unaccredited, it hasn’t had a duty to publish its job statistics. With bar exam passage rates as low as 16 percent overall, you can imagine graduates’ success rates when it comes to finding employment.

Finally, there’s a risk here that prospective students will be led astray thanks to Concord Law’s association with Purdue. Ben Miller, senior director of post-secondary education at the think tank the Center for American Progress, is a critic of Purdue’s law school purchase gambit: “I think there is a risk that marketing Concord as a good legal option from Purdue University could really fool students into thinking that they’re getting something they’re not. If you see something that says, ‘Be part of Purdue, a well-respected research university. Be a Boilermaker,’ you think you’re buying one thing and you’re getting something totally different. There’s a risk that students will feel [misled].”

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Purdue’s purchase may be revolutionary, but we’re not quite sure that the school’s students will be well served by a law school with such discouraging outcomes.

UPDATE (8:05 P.M.): We received this statement from a representative of Concord Law School after the publication of this post:

Concord Law School’s historical first time pass rate on the California Bar Exam — widely acknowledged as the hardest in the nation — average is approximately 35%, and its repeater pass is approximately 52%. On four of the last eight administrations of the California Bar exam, our graduates’ first-time pass rate was as high or higher than one or more California-based ABA schools. On the February 2016 administration of the bar exam, Concord’s graduates’ first-time pass rate was within half a point of the average of all ABA schools. These figures are all the more noteworthy given that Concord Law School’s students are typically mid-career professionals who are juggling competing responsibilities like working full-time while raising their kids or taking care of their parents (unlike more traditional students who go to law school full-time).

You also made reference to our graduates “incredibly limited opportunities” due to Concord’s accreditation status. Although Concord is not accredited by the ABA, it is registered with the State Bar of California, and complies with that body’s stringent requirements for disclosure of the geographic and licensing restrictions. Indeed, even prior to the Purdue announcement, it has historically been the case that about two-thirds of Concord students come from outside the State of California. While some of them intend to — and do — move to California upon passing the Bar in order to practice in California, many students recognize the advantages of having a California license even if they are located elsewhere. Students may practice in federal court specialties (like bankruptcy, immigration, or patent law), or work as in-house counsel (who rarely make court appearances or take depositions).

Although Kaplan University does not officially track employment statistics for the Concord JD program, the U.S. Department of Education found that Concord graduates’ average annual earnings was $111,193 in 2011 (the last time calculated). By comparison, the median starting salary for all 2014 law school graduates (including ABA accredited schools) was $82,029 (see http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib). And because Concord graduates’ law school debt is far lower, they can more easily manage their loan burden.

Purdue Buys Kaplan’s Online-Only JD Program in Education Milestone [Law.com]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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