A question about Liberty University

Evey year, the ABA generates an "average pass difference" statistic for each ABA-approved law school. The APD reflects the school's bar pass rate on all bar exams for the year, both in-state and out-of-state. A positive value means that the school's student pass at higher than average rates; a negative value means the opposite.

Here are the current official APD ratings for the eight Virginia law schools:

+13.86 William & Mary
+13.77 University of Virginia
+5.79 George Mason
+5.59 Regent
+3.94 Richmond
+0.31 Washington & Lee
-8.61 Liberty
-19.79 Appalachian

So Liberty is near the bottom. At -15%, a school is at risk of losing ABA approval. Liberty is not at that level, but it is still one of the worst performing law schools in the state in terms of bar passage.

By whom?

The best-known law school rankings (by far) are those published by US News & World Report. Of the ~ 200 ranked law schools, Liberty is currently located somewhere in the lowest tier, roughly the bottom 25% (US News doesn't assign individual rankings to schools in the lowest tier)

 

The actual number of Liberty students in the Feb 2011 bar exam, according to Virginia Lawyer's Weekly, was .... five.

Was the performance of those five students a fluke? Well, Virginia Lawyer's Weekly puts it like this:

 

Though the number of students has been small in each class, those students are consistently nailing the BAR. The school is consistently receiving pass rates in the 80's and 90's. This is the ranking I was referring to. You can't fault the school for having a low number of students. Incidentally, I don't buy the argument of small class size rendering insignificant results. An argument could be made that a small class size doesn't work to your advantage. If the class size is only 5, it only takes 1 failure to bring the percentage all the way down to 80%.

I'm not declaring Liberty the next Harvard Law, nor do I have a vested interest of any kind in Liberty University. I am only suggesting that Liberty Law is doing extraordinarily well for any school, especially for one that is so new to the game. This should provide students with some confidence in the university, no matter the program of study.

 

I had the privilege of touring Liberty's law school when it was still in its infancy. I also got to sit in on a lecture from one of their law professors. I came away with the impression that Liberty's law school really had its act together and was delivering a very high quality education.

 

Even if we put aside the 2011 and 2012 pass rates for a moment, let's look at Liberty's pass rates from 2007-2010 compared to the state average. These stats are only for Virginia. Historic VA pass rates are taken from VBBE - Welcome. Liberty's yearly pass rates are taken from Bar Passage Rates | Liberty University School of Law. I could not find Liberty's averages by term.



2007 State Feb 54.2
2007 State July 71.8
2007 Liberty 83.3

2008 State Feb 55.6
2008 State July 79.7
2008 Liberty 89.4

2009 State Feb 49.3
2009 State July 75.4
2009 Liberty 57

2010 State Feb 57.2
2010 State July 75.2
2010 Liberty 70

No matter how you slice it, Liberty's pass rates very good.

 

Then perhaps you should review the concept of "small sample sizes" in a statistics textbook.

Not according to the current official ABA numbers.

They show a pass rate of 70 % on the Virginia Bar exam, compared to a statewide average of 78.15 %. So Liberty's rating for Virginia is -8.15% , i.e. well below the statewide average.

For other states, the sample sizes are small, and the pass rates vary widely. Liberty's overall rating (for all states) is -8.61%, so slightly worse than the statewide rating.

 

According to the ABA's standardized data for Liberty, Liberty's average bar passage rate is 71.13%, compared to 79.74% for all ABA schools in Virginia.

The difference between Liberty's lower-than-average pass rate and the Virginia-school average is the -8.61 CalDog notes above. Of the eight ABA schools in Virginia, Liberty is one of only two that are below average in their latest data.

 

Pug, you just wrote that "The school is consistently receiving pass rates in the 80's and 90's," then went back
to 2007 to 2010 Virginia bar pass rates and found 83, 89, 57, and 70. This doesn't match the claim, and doesn't seem to match the claim that they're doing "extraordinarily well for any school."

 

Why would you want to put aside the current data? Aren't current conditions more relevant than historical conditions?

It does appear to be true that Liberty's pass rates were historically better than they are today. Here the official LSAC APD numbers for recent years:

2010: +8.74
2011: +10.08
2012: -4.46
2013: -8.61 (current)

So perfectly respectable in 2010-11, but then going downhill, and currently poor.

Patterns like this are actually not unusual. Brand new schools typically start out with a relatively small number of well qualified and committed students. In fact, new law schools often offer attractive financial aid packages to attract strong students that wouldn't otherwise consider an unknown school with little or no reputation. But as they grow, and enroll larger numbers of students, it gets harder to maintain the same level of quality in the student body. For example, hefty scholarships are a great way to attract a small number of good students initially, but you can't keep discounting tuition forever, especially as enrollment grows.

 

I excluded the recent data (the 100% class) because the low student count was called into question. I wanted to show a pattern. If you include the subsequent years, you'll see the 100% class and, I believe, a 94% class. I can't find the supporting data on the 94% class, so I can stand on that one.

 

I didn't intend to make this a law school debate. It would be misleading to look at these numbers in a void. Yes, it appears the recent numbers are down, but that isn't necessarily uncommon for any school in any field if you take an isolated snap shot. The average from 2010-2013, according to your data, is a very respectable +7.97. If you were to add the data from 2007-2009, the overall average would be even better. Overall, this has been very solid performance. We will see what the future holds. However, none of this is on topic. I brought this up only to illustrate the legitimate nature of the school as a whole within the context of its RA business programs.

 

It looks like Liberty has, in fact, been playing this game. Here are the percentages of Liberty law school students on full-tuition scholarships, from the Official LSAC Guide:

2008 60
2009 58.1
2010 30.5
2011 17.8
2012 12.4
2013 10.5 (current)

We will indeed. But my guess is that low pass rates are the future -- not the historical high rates.

It looks like Liberty was "buying" good students to fill up its classes during the first few years of operation, by offering lots of full-tuition scholarships. There is nothing illegal or unethical about this; in fact it is common practice. Unfortunately, it's not a practice that can sustained forever.

 

To paraphrase closely, Pugbelly2 writes that Liberty is a legitimate school. Absolutely.

 

I agree. We'll have to see if Liberty can attract better candidates in future years. They will never be Harvard or Georgetown, but I think they are off to a good start and have a chance to be players in the state.

 

The ratings published by US News & World Report are very popular and very well advertised but they are questionable at best.

 

For Law Schools Liberty's program does need to improve. If I wanted to study Law in Virginia at a Christian University, Regent would be my choice. They have a decent pass rate and the program has been around longer I think. It also has some very good connections in D.C. from my limited understanding.

 

I wonder how they would ever teach a class based on biological evolution. Would it be named "Evolution of Biology by God's Standards" xD

 

I doubt that such a topic would even come up in the law curriculum, unless something has suddenly changed.

 

For the foreseeable future, Liberty is going to be fortunate if they can simply maintain their current status, which is "near the bottom, but not threatened with loss of ABA approval."

The problem is that the demand for law school is falling fast. For Fall 2010, 87,500 people applied to law school. For Fall 2011, that dropped to only 78,800. For Fall 2012, that dropped to only 67,950. That's a 22 % drop in law school applicants in just two years.

And this comes at exactly the same time that Liberty is cutting back on scholarships, which means that the effective cost to attend Liberty is going up. In other words, Liberty is raising its prices during a period of falling demand. Obviously that is not the best way to compete.

Look at the matriculation numbers for Liberty from the Official LSAC Guides:

2008 70 (= entering students in Fall 2006)
2009 71
2010 109
2011 119
2012 135
2013 99 (= entering students in Fall 2011)

So after years of steady increases, the size of Liberty's entering class fell by more than 25 % between Fall 2010 and Fall 2011. It wouldn't surprise me if it was even smaller for Fall 2012, but I haven't seen any numbers yet.

So right now, Liberty appears to be losing ground, in terms of both quality and quantity of students.

 

No, they would approach it in the traditional understanding of what a scientific theory is. It is understood that there is evolution in species as this can be plainly seem. What Liberty would challenge is the unproven idea that evolution is a scientific "fact". There are huge caps in the fossil record, many of the "links" are later to be shown to be abnormal or injured regular human beings. There is the problem of mathematical probability that evolution as taught today happen, mathematically it comes out to zero. There is no demonstrable way to prove evolution or creationism since one cannot repeat through experimentation. Finally what is essentially forgotten but usually taught in introductory science courses is the old axiom that the scientific method does not prove fact. Although denied, evolution is as much a faith as any other religion, the way it is defended and with the huge gaps one must have faith to place the belief and trust in it.