Was Kensington Unversity ever accredited?

I was wondering if any one knows if the Kensington University was ever accredited?

 

Kensington University was never accredited. They were, at one time, approved by the California Bureau of Private Post-secondary Education, but they lost this approval.

 

Additionally, its law school (JD) graduates were, for a period of time, eligible to take the CA Bar exam. Some most likely even passed.

 

Kensington was one of those schools taking advantage of the old "California Authorized" provision in the law--94310(c). Before 1989, anyone could start a university if he/she submitted an affidavit covering 13 areas of operation (degrees to be awarded, faculty, that kind of stuff) and could claim $50,000 worth of assets to be used towards the operation. However, no one checked the validity of such claims, so some pretty loose estimates of assets were employed. As a result, the Authorized category was made up of schools legitimately trying to become legitimate, schools willing to operate at the very margins of legitimacy, and outright degree mills. It was sometimes hard to tell. (Sadly, it was often not!)

During that time, unaccredited schools could apply to the state for "Approval" of specific programs they offered. Thus, a school could have some programs "Approved" by California, while the others were "Authorized." The difference? Not much, except that the Approved programs were pretty good, and many were okayed for licensure (especially master's degrees for MFCC and doctorates for Psychology). The state could focus its very limited resources on a small handful of programs it approved.

Unfortunately, this system led to some confusion, both with foreign and domestic students. It was easy to confuse state authorization or approval for accreditation. I mean, if it is legal it must be okay, right? Especially problematic were the Authorized schools. Most of the public didn't distinguish between them and those schools with Approved programs. IMHO, the Approved programs were closer to accredited ones that the Authorized ones were to Approved ones. This has been borne out over time, with many of the schools offering Approved programs under that system going on to accreditation.

In 1989, the state got rid of the "Authorized" category. It also stopped doing programmatic Approval, instead requiring that the school receive Approval. But at the same time, the state gutted the resources necessary to conduct this approval. The result: many schools were approved that simply should not have been. Once the state got around to some of the worst, approvals were pulled. (Some schools, like Pacific Western and Fredrick Taylor, created dual systems, where they operated a small version of their school under California approval--involving a few programs--while simultaneously operating "anything goes" versions under Hawaii's then-loose school laws.)

One of the schools the state went after was Kensington. It was an "Authorized" school under the old system, then was grandfathered into the new one. But the state eventually got to it and poof, its approval was pulled. (Pacific Western experienced the same thing, but a change in ownership, administration, faculty, and design led to the DETC-accredited California Miramar U. Don't get me started.)

As for the law school, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an unaccredited distance school offering a bar-qualifying JD. But that was because the rules were--as I described--incredibly lax. You wouldn't believe the very bad schools that offered bar-qualifying programs. Of course, almost no one got past the first year "Baby Bar." The number to actually pass the bar from these schools was estimated to be fewer than 1% Southland University, anyone?

The other posts in the thread are correct. I thought I'd add a little flavor. Any more "flava" and I'd be wearing a really big clock.

 

Are you stating that Kensington had no CA Bar Exam successes? Just asking ...

 

He didn't say that no one who took courses at Kensington passed; it's probably impossible to (even in theory) know that for sure. He was speaking about the unaccredited schools in general, and said that few passed: "almost no one got past the first year "Baby Bar." The number to actually pass the bar from these schools was estimated to be fewer than 1%"

 

Source/s …? Again just asking …

Also as regards ... less /fewer than 1% pass rate for unaccredited correspondence law schools:

“With respect to first-time pass rates, correspondence law schools actually outperformed schools accredited by the California Committee of Bar Examiners on four of the last five bar examinations. In one instance (February 2003), correspondence students were twice as successful (44 percent to 22 percent).”

Re: David L. Boyd, President - William Howard Taft University

California Bar Journal Sept. 2005
California Bar Journal

General Bar Statistics: Correspondence Law Schools (Feb. 1992 – Jul. 1996); includes Kensington:
http://www.nwculaw.edu/testimonials_statistics.html

 

Dunno if it's true or not, I was just clarifying what he said.

(Just for interest sake, I totaled the stats on that linked page, it works out to 10% of Kensington students passing the bar, so, higher than 1% but still seems pretty low?)

 

I’m not endorsing Kensington whatsoever; however, seemingly what RD said /wrote, e.g., less than 1% Bar passing rate, would seem to be incorrect (?).

P.S. Yes the Kensington 10% is not too impressive, but 10 percent is still more than 10 times greater than a figure of less than 1%.

 

IIRC, the state used to publish those numbers. Schools like Kensington had extremely low (or non-existent) results.

I'm sure you could find it if you wanted to.

 

Depends on how you look at it. First, quoting Taft isn't representative; that school tried hard to run a good law program. Second, Bar passing rates aren't the whole story. You also have to look at what percentage passed the Baby Bar--and THOSE numbers were tiny. If you don't pass the Baby Bar, you don't get to sit for the Bar later on. Finally, you have to consider how many students pass eventually. How many takes do they need before passing? Remember, the CalBar is notoriously tough, even for regular law grads.

Schools like Kensington would only have one or two students sitting for the Bar each year, many of whom took it multiple times.

So let's take a 10% pass rate. How many took the Bar more than once? That lowers the number. How many never even got to take the Bar because they didn't pass the course? How many didn't take the Bar because they didn't pass the Baby Bar? How many didn't pass because they didn't get to the Baby Bar? We don't know these numbers precisely, but those of us who lived the experience back then recall the anecdotes. The notion that one out of every hundred students starting out at an unaccredited correspondence law school eventually becoming attorneys isn't far fetched. It sounds about right.

 

I would put it higher, at maybe one in ten. At some unaccredited schools, it may be more like one in a hundred.

As stated above, bar pass rates are only part of the story. There are three ways that a student at an unaccredited law school can fail to become an attorney:

(1) Students at unaccredited law schools have to pass the First-Year Law Student's Examination, or "Baby Bar". Many never get past this hurdle. Students at Calbar and ABA approved law schools are normally exempt from this requirement.

(2) Students at unaccredited law schools drop out or flunk out at relatively high rates. The Calbar and ABA approved schools have significantly lower attrition. In fact, the net attrition at the top law schools is essentially zero; if anyone does leave, the school can easily attract a transfer student from a lower-ranked school as a replacement.

(3) Graduates of unaccredited law schools have relatively low pass rates on the General Bar exam.

*****

Here's a real-world example. In 2011, a total of 95 students from unaccredited "Distance learning" or "correspondence" law schools passed the General Bar exam in California. This includes first-timers and repeaters. Overall, there were 6,792 successful bar candidates in 2011, so the DL students were about 1.4 % of the total.

Notice that 95 isn't a very big number. How do all of the unaccredited law schools survive, if the total pool is only 95 students per year?

The answer is that there is a far larger number of unsuccessful students in the pool. The unaccredited JD is a 4-year program, so the successful DL students started in 2007 (or earlier for repeat takers). In 2007, a total of 944 DL students took the "Baby Bar" (again, this includes first-timers and repeaters).

So 944 DL students started the licensing process (by taking the "Baby Bar") in 2007. But only 95 DL students successfully completed the licensing process (by passing the General Bar) four years later.

The number of DL law students who enter the pipeline (by taking the Baby Bar) seems to be about 10 times larger than the number of DL students who successfully exit the pipeline (by passing the General Bar). That's a very high attrition rate.

 

The oldest General Bar stats posted on the Calbar website are from 1997 and 1998. In those years, the General Bar was administered a total of 40 times to Kensington graduates, with 2 successes and 38 failures. So a few Kensington grads did become licensed attorneys, but the total number was probably very low (possibly in the single digits).

 

Recall that Kensington was one of very few law schools (perhaps the only one) owned by a fairly active law firm, Calabro Calabro and Calabro.

Between February 1992 and July 1996, Kensington had 31 first-timers take the Bar and 6 passed (19%, 4th best among the 19 schools that had at least five exam-takers. On another hand, the other 15 had a cumulative total of 3 people take the exam, none passed).

Considering all takers, first time and repeats, Kensington had 78 takers, 8 passes (10%). The most takers were from Taft, Northwestern California, and Newport: 311 takers, each with a pass rate in the 20's. City University Los Angeles had 58 takers and zero passes. Even James Kirk's Southland University had 2 passes of 17 (12%).

The exam-takers include, of course, only those who survive the first year (or more) of study, the Baby Bar, the next three (or more) years of study. The percent of those who enroll and eventually pass the Bar was a very low number indeed.