First, I want to thank Bill for welcoming me to The Legal Whiteboard several years ago. It was an honor to be welcomed as a contributor and it has been a privilege to have a blog outlet readily available for some of my observations on data relating to various aspects of legal education.
With the recent news that the Whittier College Board of Trustees has decided to close its law school, it seems appropriate to revisit a post from October 20, 2014, in which I compared applicant and enrollment trends in dental schools between 1975 and 1990 with applicant and enrollment trends in law schools between 2004 and 2014. The post noted that six dental schools closed between the late 1980s and early 1990s and suggested that we should expect some comparable contraction in the number of law schools. So far we have had the merger of Hamline and William Mitchell into Mitchell|Hamline, the announced closure of Indiana Tech and of Whittier, and federal loan constraints that might mean the imminent closure of Charlotte. At a roughly comparable point in time for dental schools in the late 1980s, only two of the six schools to close had actually announced the decision to close. The other four closed over the next few years. My guess is that in the coming years, we will learn about additional closures as law schools and their host universities adjust to a changing economic environment.
For four consecutive years we have seen a decline in the number of applicants to law school and a corresponding decline in the number of matriculating first-year students. Over the last year or two, some have suggested that as a result of this “market adjustment” some law schools would end up closing. Most recently, the former AALS President, Michael Olivas, in response to the financial challenges facing the Thomas Jefferson Law School, was quoted as stating that he expects several law schools to close.
To date, however, no law schools have closed (although the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School recently announced the closure of its Ann Arbor branch).
Have law schools found ways to cut costs and manage expenses in the face of declining revenues such that all will remain financially viable and remain in operation? Is it realistic to think that no law schools will close?
Although there may be a number of people in the legal academy who continue to believe that somehow legal education is “exceptional” – that market forces may impose financial challenges for law schools in the near term, but will not result in the closing of any law schools — this strikes me as an unduly optimistic assessment of the situation.
To understand why, I think those in legal education can learn from the experience of those in dental education in the 1980s.
The Dental School Experience from 1975-1990
In the 1980s, dental school deans, along with provosts and presidents at their host universities, had to deal with the challenge of a significant decline in applicants to dental school.
At least partially in response to federal funding to support dental education, first-year enrollment at the country’s dental schools grew throughout the 1970s to a peak in 1979 of roughly 6,300 across roughly 60 dental schools. Even at that point, however, for a number of reasons — improved dental health from fluoridation, reductions in federal funding, high tuition costs and debt loads — the number of applicants had already started to decline from the mid-1970s peak of over 15,000.
By the mid-1980s, applicants had fallen to 6,300 and matriculants had fallen to 5,000. As of 1985, no dental schools had closed. But by the late 1980s and early 1990s there were fewer than 5000 applicants and barely 4000 first-year students – applicants had declined by more than two-thirds and first-year enrollment had declined by more than one-third from their earlier peaks. (Source – American Dental Association – Trends in Dental Education – U.S. Dental School Applicant and First-Year Enrollment Trends 1955-2009 (copy on file with author).)
How did dental schools and their associated universities respond to this changing market? Between 1986 and 1993, six private universities closed their dental schools: Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1986); Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (1988); Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (1990); Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rutherford, New Jersey (1990); Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri (1991); and Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois (1993). (Source: Dental Education at the Crossroads: Challenges and Change, Table 1.1 (Institute of Medicine 1995)). According to a New York Times article from October 29, 1987, “Georgetown, formerly the nation’s largest private dental school, decided to close after a Price Waterhouse study found that the school would have a $3.6 million deficit by 1992.” (Source: Tamar Lewin, Plagued by Falling Enrollment, Dental Schools Close or Cut Back, New York Times, Oct. 29, 1987).
Some of the primary factors contributing to the closing of dental schools were described as follows:
Financial issues were repeatedly described as critical. Dental education was cited as an expensive enterprise that is or may become a drain on university resources. On average, current-year expenditures for the average dental school are about $1 million more than current revenues. … The declining size and quality of the applicant pool during the 1980s played a role in some closures by threatening the tuition base and prestige on which private schools rely. Faculty and alumni resistance to change may feed impatience among university administrators. In some institutions, the comparative isolation of dental schools within the university has provided them with few allies or at least informed colleagues and has left them ill-prepared to counter proposals for “downsizing.” (Source: Dental Education at the Crossroads: Challenges and Change, at 202-203 (Institute of Medicine 1995)).
The Law School Experience from 2004-2014
In terms of applicants and enrollment over the last decade, the trends law schools have experienced look remarkably comparable to the experience of dental schools in the 1970s and 1980s. According to the LSAC Volume Summary, applicants to law schools peaked in 2004 with 100,600 applicants (and roughly 48,200 first-year students). By 2010, applicants had fallen to roughly 87,600, but first-year enrollment peaked at 52,500. Over the last four years, applicants have fallen steadily to roughly 54,700 for fall 2014, with a projected 37,000 first-years matriculating this fall, the smallest number since 1973-74, when there were 40 fewer law schools and over one thousand fewer law professors. (Source – ABA Statistics)(For the analysis supporting this projection of 37,000 first-years, see my blog post on The Legal Whiteboard from March 18, 2014.)
The two charts below compare the dental school experience from 1975 to 1990 with the law school experience in the last decade. One chart compares dental school applicants with law school applicants and one chart compares dental school first-years with law school first-years. (Note that for purposes of easy comparison, the law school numbers are presented as one-tenth of the actual numbers.)
(Sources – American Dental Association – Trends in Dental Education – U.S. Dental School Applicant and First-Year Enrollment Trends 1955-2009 (copy on file with author) and the LSAC’s Volume Summary (with my own estimates for 2014 based on the LSAC’s Current Volume Summary)).
The Law School Experience 2014-2019
Notably, these charts do not bode well for law schools. The law school experience tracks pretty closely the dental school experience over the first ten years reflected in the charts. For law schools, 2014 looks a lot like 1985 did for dental schools.