CA Bar Exam results

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by cbkent, Dec 29, 2003.

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  1. cbkent

    cbkent Member

  2. itshark

    itshark New Member

    Wow....those are extremely disappointing results....what happened with the dl schools this time??? they really did suffer in comparison to the traditional schools....Previous 2 rounds, the dl schools really seemed to be wooping the traditional schools....
     
  3. Mike Albrecht

    Mike Albrecht New Member

    /Yes the DL schools did not do as well as the ABA approved schools, but overall they did better than the CA Accredited non-ABA and non-accredited schools.
     
  4. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    These results are interesting.

    Among the 19 CA ABA law schools, the best result was turned in by Stanford (92%), the worst by Whittier and Golden Gate (tied at 31%). Overall, the ABA schools averaged 72%.

    The best of the 19 active Cal-bar accredited schools was So. Cal. Inst. of Law in Sta. Barbara at 100%. But since they only had two test takers, I expect that's a fluke. The next best was La Verne at 50%. The worst was Ventura C. Law at 0%. Overall, the Cal-bar accredited schools averaged 26%.

    Of the 10 active DL law schools, the best was a three way tie between Taft, Oakbrook and NW California at 50%. Concord only made 25%, Abraham Lincoln 20% while Br.-Am., SCUPS, Newport, Saratoga and U. Honolulu turned in big fat zeros. Overall, the DL law schools averaged 29%.

    The remaining eight non-Cal-bar residential schools ranged between 43% and 0%, averaging 15%.

    Despite 37 of the 56 law schools in Califoria being non-ABA, the 19 ABA schools accounted for 90% of the in-state exam takers and 96% of those who passed the bar exam.

    The ten active DL law schools only combined to produce 13 people who passed, total. (Five couldn't produce any.) That's out of 2,457 in-state individuals who passed the exam. By comparison, Hastings College of Law in SF had 280 people pass.

    Assuming the handful of test-takers produced useful numbers, Taft, NW Cal and Oakbrook do seem to be the class of the CA DL law schools and deserve a hand. Their 50% tied La Verne and topped 36 of the 56 Ca. law schools. That includes 4 of the 19 ABA law schools.
     
  5. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Thanks for the summary, Bill.

    ("...British-American...Saratoga turned in big fat zeros...")

    Since those are the two that promoted the JD-to-LL.M. parlay, leading to bar qualification in other states, we may have to wait a while to find out if that approach really can work.
     
  6. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Concord students, beware!
     
  7. itshark

    itshark New Member

    One round of bad results does not make the school. Sounds like a bunch of soreness...whatever...shame on you nosborne...
     
  8. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    itshark: One round of bad results does not make the school.

    John: Agreed. But it was five years ago that the people of Concord cornered me at the DETC convention and, politely but firmly, took me to task for commenting publicly on their disappointing bar results. 'We're just getting started,' they said. 'We'll be taking much more care in whom we allow or encourage to take the exams. Wait and see.' And five years later, things are definitely worse.
     
  9. oxpecker

    oxpecker New Member

    I think it's interesting that Taft does no up-front filtering (AFAIK) and does quite well.
     
  10. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Itshark:

    I saw the wink. I am sure YOU will have no difficulty with the Baby Bar. When do you take it?
     
  11. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Oh, and while I am at it, please note that my personal favorite, the REALLY INEXPENSIVE NWCal, is in the top three...
     
  12. GBrown

    GBrown New Member

    Why?

    Please elaborate. Why is NWCal your personal favorite?
     
  13. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Why NWCalU is my personal favorite:

    Keep in mind that I have never enrolled in NWCalU or any other D/L law program, until now, that is, since I'm working on an LL.M. from the University of London.

    When I asked NWCal about their JSD program, their response was swift, accurate and complete. They then did not BUG me about it.

    They charge less than $2,000 per year for their Bar qualifying JD program. They offer the cheapest credible Bar JD out there.

    About half of their permanent faculty hold JDs from ABA schools.

    They've been in business since the 'eighties.

    Their students routinely become California attorneys.

    They offer optional in-person prep sessions for the Baby Bar and Bar exams.
     
  14. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    So many distance law schools, so few take the bar exam, and so few of these pass.

    Where are the economics in these schools? Unless they are getting tuition from 100 students for every one writing the bar exam, they can't be profitable.
     
  15. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Well, as to Concord, they are definitely a profit making organization. They also charge, what, $28,000 total tuition?

    NWCal is a large operation I think. Maybe one of the largest. It seems to me that the larger a D/L operation is, the lower its per-student cost becomes. I don't know the economics of it but I suspect that the majority of enrollees either never complete the program or never take the Bar.

    I admit I don't see how NWCal can do it for $8,000 total.

    Oakbrook is a nonprofit, I think. They are charging $12,000 which is still not a lot.
     
  16. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I've wondered about that.

    Maybe there are two business models.

    One model strings students along for as long as possible, keeping their hopes alive while milking tuition from them. Then the school posts abysmal pass percentages.

    The other model demands considerable labor from its students and encourages students with no realistic chance of passing the bar to resign from the program. That lowers tuition revenues in the short term but allows the school to post significantly better results on the bar exam. Those results in turn lead to increased applications which counteracts the revenue loss.

    In both cases an incoming student has an equally low chance of becoming an attorney, but the second (high attrition) model keeps those unlikely to make it from wasting their time and money.

    Concerning the low tuition, I'd guess that just about 100% of the faculty at these places are local practicing attorneys who moonlight by teaching a course or two. They probably have little or no full-time faculty. (That's probably another thing, besides DL, that would keep them from being accredited.)

    If tuition remains low in proportion to costs, that suggests that the school might have a sense of mission. With Oakbrook that's clearly their political/religious agenda. With NW Cal. it seems to simply be a dedication to teaching law.
     
  17. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    That's pure poetry. Why NOT a "dedication to teaching law"? If I lived in California, you know, I might very well give my time for little or no pay to do just that, because I would enjoy it and it MATTERS to me.
     
  18. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    That second model is likely true of the ABA schools.
     
  19. se94583

    se94583 New Member

    I think the conclusions above are suffering somewhat from the "I want a recognized degree on the cheap" bias without real regard for the content of the qualifying degree. Getting a JD from wherever does not exactly prepare one to take the CA bar exam. Much of passing the bar exam has to do with the student's innate intellectual abilities and motivation, the student's choice of bar prep course, timing, test taking skills, etc. (Those who never went thru the ordeal of studying for the bar in the 12 weeks after graduating from a 3 year program probably do not understand this). The real schools serve as a sort of gatekeeper whereas many of those who have no business ever taking a bar exam are either not admitted to study or fail out of their JD program; the non ABA schools are less selective by nature and much more consumer-orientated, which leads to their abysmal pass percentages in part. Likely more so than the rigor or lack of rigor of the JD itself.

    As to the "in-between" differences between schools, the N's of each sample are too small to draw a realistic conclusion re the population graduating from each school (where apparently the majority choose not to take the CA bar exam): with N's of less than 10 in all cases, 1 or 2 successful takers would skew the results significantly. For example, if you culled out 4 of Stanford's grads, and all 4 failed, would you then conclude that Stanford was not as good as Concord or Taft? A friend of the family graduated top 10% from Hastings-- yet she has failed the CA bar 4 times (largely to motivational and focus problems, IMHO) and is working on try #5, but if you used her as a representative sample against the one person who passed (presumably on the first try) from Concord, you would conclude her Hastings degree is worthless and she learned nothing there yet excelling on paper and being very knowlegable in the law (not to mention getting a very good job out of school before they tired of her failing the bar so many times).

    I would like to see more realistic assessments such as student satisfaction, employment, retention, quantative assessments of the courses, etc.
     
  20. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    se 94583:

    Perfectly correct.

    These are also supposed to be things the California BPPVE looks at when approving a school to offer degrees.

    I notice that ALL ABA schools use the LSAT to screen applicants whereas I am not aware of any D/L program that does. On the other hand, CalBar accredited schools, at least some of them, DO use the LSAT and their performance is, I think, better overall than unaccredited and D/L schools when you crank in the fact that CalBar accredited students are exempt from the FYLEX, meaning no one gets weeded out.

    (I am speculating that a larger percentage of CalBar students actually attempt the Bar than D/L and unaccredited students.)

    Is the question one of applicant quality or program quality?

    There's room for genuine scholarly research here; I am not conversant enough with statistics to carry it out, but maybe someone around here is?
     

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