Law Schools

Uh-Oh... Law School Tuition Hikes Are Back

Please don't doom this law school's graduates to more debt.

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money bookOver the course of the past decade, many law schools have realized that allowing students to graduate with crippling debt and middling job prospects wasn’t such a good idea. Many law schools either froze or cut their tuition, leaving only the obliviously out-of-touch to push through tuition increases during a time of turmoil. Just when you thought that law schools had gotten the point, today we have news of a law school that’s proposing quite a large tuition increase.

Which law school could it be?

It’s the University of North Dakota School of Law, a school that for years has been heralded as having one of the least expensive law programs in the country. North Dakota Law is now proposing a nine percent tuition hike.

The Bismarck Tribune has some additional details:

UND has proposed a . . . 9 percent jump in rates at the law school. Tuition for the law program, which is the only one of its kind in North Dakota, have been ranked in the past among the least expensive—if not the outright cheapest—in the country. Even with the proposed rate increase, UND President Mark Kennedy said Tuesday he expects the school to be less expensive than the university’s graduate programs and remain among the very least expensive law programs of national accord.

Kennedy previously has advocated for increased law school tuition to boost revenue at a time of declining state appropriations.

For the current academic year, tuition at North Dakota Law is $11,434 per year for full-time, in-state students, and $25,423 per year for full-time, out-of-state students. According to Law School Transparency, the non-discounted total cost to attend the school as an in-state student is $99,579, and $152,883 as an out-of-state student. Yes, this is very “cheap” in terms of law school costs, but when more than half of the class (58 percent) is paying full freight, a nine percent tuition increase can have severe effects on graduates’ financial futures.

The State Board of Higher Education in North Dakota is set to consider North Dakota Law’s proposed tuition increase on May 15. Let’s hope the Board also considers the fact that only 51 percent of the class of 2016 found full-time, long-term employment where bar passage was required 10 months after graduation. When about half of the class hasn’t found full-time attorney work almost a year after graduation, a nine percent tuition increase seems unsustainable at this time. Please don’t doom graduates of the state’s only law school to more debt.

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University of North Dakota proposes tuition hikes, including 9 percent increase at law school [Bismarck Tribune]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please 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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