Civil Rights
Block on Trump's Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court
And the market begins to correct ...
Our friends at Kaplan Test Prep did another survey related to law school admissions, this time polling admissions officers, and for some of you, this won't be surprising: law schools are cutting incoming seats. Now, we're a little shocked, as this is an example of schools doing the right thing (well, the right thing would be to reverse the trend of ever-increasing, historically-high tuition, but we digress), but we've bourne witness to plummeting application rates for years with little to no reaction from schools.
Until now, that is.
The survey polled admissions staff from over 125 ABA-approved law schools (there are 203 ABA-approved institutions, so that's a heck of a sample size). And for the vast majority of respondents, the consensus seems to be that the sky is falling. The findings include:
Kaplan's press release also points to the demand side of the equation, noting that since the high point in 2010, applications have dropped from 602,300 to 385,400 in 2013, their lowest level in decades. (Though we'd note, again, that prior to the 2010 "wait out the recession in law school" spike, application numbers resided around the 500,000 level, so the level of applications, while depressed, isn't as dramatic as those numbers indicate, nor was it unforeseeable after schools bloated their entering class sizes in 2010.)
The most encouraging note to take away from these results is that, at least for the vast majority of schools, the administration isn't burying its heads in the sand, ignoring reality and praying for a sudden spike in applicants in a year or two. Then again, we're not so sure that admitting fewer students is necessarily the answer.
While it means they can continue to keep high admissions standards (and their corresponding U.S. News Ranking), it also means schools are still pumping out graduates with soul-crushing student loan burdens and little hope of lucrative careers.
Related Resources: