Friday, January 31, 2014
Muller: Which Law Schools Have the Highest Non-JD Enrollment?
Derek Muller (Pepperdine), Which Law Schools Have the Highest Non-JD Enrollment?:
I've discussed the trend of increased non-JD enrollment in law schools. Thanks to new ABA data, we now have the JD and non-JD enrollment data for each school in 2013. It turns out that the original figures I used were underinclusive in one respect: the ABA reports "non-JD enrollment" as the sum of post-JD enrollment and post-baccalaureate enrollment (including "non law," usually including "master level programs aimed at non-lawyer professionals"). But it excludes the 1677 "non-JD online" enrollment.
I sorted the schools by the total non-JD enrollment--including post-JD, post-baccalaureate, and non-JD online--as a percentage of total enrollment (the denominator being those categories, plus full-time and part-time JD enrollment). These schools had the highest percentage of non-JD enrollment.
- Vermont: 38.5%
- NYU: 33.3%
- Loyola Chicago: 32.2%
- Boston University: 30.7%
- Temple: 26.6%
- Georgetown: 25.4%
- Alabama: 24.5%
- Washington: 24.4%
- UC-Berkeley: 23.2%
- USC: 22.0%
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/01/muller.html
Comments
That's an interesting assessment, Ted; thanks for sharing it. One could add, of course, that non-JD students (and transfers) do not have their GPA/LSATs counted towards the schools' means/medians/25th/75th percentiles of those scores, so the admissions threshold for these programs tend to be... quite low. All your student loan dollars are belong to us!
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Jan 31, 2014 10:38:26 AM
For Vermot, the non-JD percentage may be driven by the fact that JD enrollment fell off a cliff. I assume a good chunk of these non-JD students are pursuing an LLM. I'm surprised that JDs would through good money after bad to pursue an LLM at some of these schools.
Posted by: HTA | Jan 31, 2014 9:44:04 AM
Implications: All per capita inputs into the US News rankings are computed using JD FTEs. Non-JD students are excluded, even as the inputs used to provide their educations are counted towards the ranking. This means that student/teacher ratios, expenditures per student, and so forth are systematically overstated in US News to the extent a school enrolls non-JDs. US News ranks of the schools on Derek's list are therefore artificially boosted -- the higher on the list, the greater the artificial rankings boost.
Posted by: Theodore Seto | Jan 31, 2014 9:40:38 AM
You might check if the Vermont students are not actually dually-enrolled MSEL (Masters of Studies in Environmental Law) students, which is a popular concurrent option for a high percentage of Vermont JD candidates.
Posted by: VK | Jan 31, 2014 8:35:01 PM